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Welcome to the ineedhits Search Engine Marketing blog, where we share the latest search engine and online marketing news, releases, industry trends and great DIY tips and advice.

We encourage you to get involved in our blog community - so share your opinions and experiences by leaving comments on our posts.

If you're looking for help with promoting your website - check out our range of affordable search engine marketing services.

Wednesday, August 29

7 Secrets To Better Landing Page Conversion

After your sponsored listing advertisement, your landing page is the next and best opportunity to make a sale. You are simply selling your self-short if you do not invest the time and effort into making a quality-landing page. A great landing page is the difference between a potential sale and the visitor going off to look at one of your many competitors. Get in the mindset of thinking that the landing page is the one shot you have of converting your pay per click investment. Check out the great tips below to help increase landing page conversion.

Know your target audience.
Know who you are writing for. If you're selling household pet food, tailor your copy for the potential buyer. Put yourself in the buyer's shoes - what would you want to know if were buying the same product?

Keep it simple.
Less is more. Internet users have too many options and limited patience. If they cannot quickly see what you are selling, they will move on. Provide a simple call to action option such as "sign up here" or "enter in contact details". Do not have an overly long contact form as most first time users are unwillingly to supply too many personal details like a phone number. What would you like to be contacted about, when and how is sufficient.

Have clear goals for the page.
Always have a plan for what you are trying to achieve with a landing page. Conversion is the obvious one but know where you want to send the visitor and what experience you're hoping to achieve.

What happens next?
Let the visitors know what will happen after they have entered in their details. Will they be called or emailed, if so when - will it be 24 hours? or 48 hours?

Be professional.
After the advertisement, the landing page is the next contact point for your business, always project a professional image.

Test.
Visit your own site's landing page. How do you rate the experience? Compare your landing page to others - is it better? what improvements can be made? A good trick is to run two pages simultaneously; one with a subtle difference like an image or different headline. This will let you compare the performance of the two pages and which factors perform better.

Have more than one.
Depending on what is being sold, each product should have its own landing page. The visitor can be confused if there are greatly different products being offered on the same page.

There are no hard and fast rules regarding landing pages, but by not doing the basic things will effect conversion and have a negative impact on an online business. The landing page is one of the faces of your business it should always look good and make the visitor want to interact with it.

PPC Success The Insiders' Story

Being new to Search engine optimization can be daunting when your brand new site has just gone live and you have found out front page listing on the organic results in Google cannot be done over night. So you decide on Pay per click advertising the fast and cost effective method to get your new site noticed quickly. Below are some simple tips to maintain a good working relationship between client and provider

Let the experts run the show.
You do not need to spend each day staring at click reports, changing keywords and doing keyword research. That is what you are paying the PPC company for.

Be realistic.
The traffic will come but be patient. A quality PPC provider will take their time to work out what the best approach is to meet the sites traffic goals.

Going in all guns blazing buying up every conceivable keyword for your site is not often the best option for the sponsored listings. With a new campaign you do not need ownership of all the keywords relevant to your site, because as yet you do not know which keywords will convert and if the PPC provider is experienced and competent, they will have a good idea as to what keywords will convert and which ones will not.

Be serious.
Take the time to invest in a quality landing page and develop your site to increase conversion. There is nothing more frustrating when a client leaves a PPC program because they were getting the traffic but no sales Pay-per-click advertising will provide the traffic but what is done with that traffic is entirely up to you.

Use the PPC campaign to benefit your organic listings.
Running a PPC campaign has no direct effect on organic listing but the indirect effects are often overlooked and poorly utilized. The campaign will provide accurate keyword data you can see what key phrases have a high click-thru rate, and what terms actually convert. It will also allow people to find you site a lot more easily than a similar priced organic campaign and potentially get them to link to your site.

Effectively managing the relationship between client and Pay per click provider will take the guesswork and stress out of running the campaign and allow you more time to concentrate on the organic results and site conversion.

Tuesday, August 28

3 Tips to Writing Great Website Copy

Writing great copy is imperative to your online success, and whilst it doesn't always come naturally, you can learn to write compelling, persuasive and clever (but not too clever) copy. Writing for online success differs greatly from offline business writing as not only are you writing to promote your business, advertise your products and persuade customers to purchase, you're also writing for search engines! However, don't despair! Here are 3 simple tips to writing great website copy.

1. Write For Your Audience
Marketing is all about targeting. Making sure that your target audience identify with your business is imperative. Write website, blog, promotional and advertising copy with your audience in mind. Consider the age, gender, race and religion of your target market; you will never convert searchers into customers if you insult them, use jargon or acronyms they will not understand or simply confuse them.

2. Clever, But Not Too Clever!
There's such a thing as being too clever. It may be fun to think of quirky and subtle marketing copy with a clever twist, however be careful that you're not being so subtle, and clever, that no one actually comprehends what you're trying to say! Get an objective review of your copy before it's posted online - if your mother, brother or the sales guy down the hall doesn't understand your meaning, then it's unlikely that your audience will. While I understand that some websites deal with specialist subjects, products and services, it's a good idea to write for the 'layman' - you never know who might come to your website looking to buy!

3. Write For the Search Engines
There's a fine line between writing for customers and writing for SEO (search engine optimization). You need to appeal to customers on an emotional level, writing convincing copy that will induce them to purchase, and you need to write copy that will tell a search engine exactly what your webpage is about. Writing for search engines is a precise, almost analytical process. Search engines rely on keywords and search phrases to compile their results and choosing the correct keywords and phrases for each of your webpages is very important. Great online copy is about being able to merge SEO into compelling copy for your users.

Great copywriting will take practice and research - think about what great copy inspires you to visit a website or make a purchase, and try adapting these practices into your own website copywriting. Most importantly... review your work! Read and re-read what you've written; get others to read and review your work - while it may take some time and effort, it will save you a lot of time and effort down the track!

Labels: Copywriting, SEO, Website Design

Mastering the Google Landing Page Quality Score

Have your Google AdWords campaigns ever suddenly been with the iron fist of Google. Have they attracted poor quality scores and high click costs, even though your campaigns are going great? If so you may still be missing an important component, landing page relevance. Even with highly relevant keywords and ad copy with great click through rates you can still attract poor quality scores. You're landing page quality score impacts your AdWords campaign and can have disastrous effects if Google deems your page to be of poor quality.

Firstly we have to remember that there is no Google employee checking your website for relevance. This is completed by 'robots' that do not read text on a page like we do, they read your website's code including keywords, title tags & meta descriptions.

There are two very useful and free tools at our disposal when troubleshooting landing page quality scores and relevance. These are the W3 Semantic Extractor and the Google site related keyword tool. What better way to get information about what Google thinks of your site than using a tool designed by Google to figure out exactly what your site is about?

If your site sells bikes however the Google tool picks up "shoes" as related content in your webpage then this would be classed as poor quality. Another factor affecting quality is content, if you have very limited content or unrelated content on your page then this may also bring about a poor quality score.

As we cannot always rely on machines to get it right, it is up to us make sure that our pages include highly relevant information about the product or services that we are offering. If you are not sure about optimization then you should try to have your site optimized by professionals to ensure that when the robots do visit, they are pointed in the right direction. A highly optimized, relevant landing page will help to lower your click costs in the longer term, increase your organic rankings and make sure that the users experience is a friendly one, which will hopefully increase your overall conversion rates.

Labels: Google AdWords, Landing Page Quality Scores, Landing Pages

Monday, August 27

Google Evangelist and Internet Founder Predicts Web Future

Google's chief evangelist shared his vision of hope and gloom for the web at the recent Edinburgh International Television Festival. Vinton Cerf, referred by many as one of the web's founding fathers, told of a web future that involved deep space, internet everywhere, and the loss of valuable information.

Mr Cerf, who joined the Google ranks in 2005, is credited for developing the internet's basic protocols (TCP/IP) with Bob Kahn back in 1973 and co-founding the Internet Society back in 1992. With that pedigree, when he shares his vision - people pay attention. So much so, Google employed him without an interview.

At the festival, Vint Cerf told of the changing penetration of the internet across the world with Asia (398.7m users) now eclipsing Europe (318.4m) and the United States (233.3m) with the highest number of internet users.

He reaffirmed the explosion of even more internet enabled devices, highlighting that someone has already developed a surfboard with internet access. His hot tip was a remote control (internet enabled of course) that would allow people to control their home entertainment systems (as an example of its many uses) from anywhere in the world.

Vint Cerf is also working on a technology project (outside of Google) that would allow interplanetary net surfing via the "solar web". The project, being worked on by NASA and America's Jet Propulsion Lab, is aimed at building a more elaborate networking capability for deep space communication, and then standardizing the protocols in the way he did for the internet was we know it.

While his vision told of internet growth, innovation and expansion, he also shared some concerns for our ability to keep it secure and preserve the valuable information it contains.

"The biggest hole we have is with internet browsers, because we have too much access to the functionality of the operating system..." he shared, highlighting this made it easy for viruses and malicious programs like "Trojans" to take control of a computer.

These security risks, compounded by the increasing prevalence of poor software design, were his greatest concerns for the future of the web. He said during his talk:

"We worry about reliability and resilience at Google, to ensure that the loss of a data centre doesn't affect everybody.... I don't know whether 1,000 years from now information that might have been valuable and could have been preserved if it was written on vellum, won't be preserved because it's written in bits."

Let's just hope his positive visions are embraced, and the net we all know continues to grow and innovate, whilst we take the time to invest in the security of this invaluable resource. It would be a travesty if the information was ever lost simply due to hast and complacency.

Yahoo! Index and Search Spider Update

Yahoo! have been busy updating their search results index and search engine spider recently, with changes to their ranking algorithm and crawler frequency. This update is especially significant for webmasters as it will change how the Yahoo! spider crawls websites.

A driving force behind the update has been feedback received by Yahoo! from webmasters. Website owners were concerned about the large amount of IP addresses that the Yahoo! search spider used to crawl each site:

"Why is it that Yahoo! uses a different IP for every page request while spidering?

A lot of sites, such as forums, have a "guests" or "online users" count listed on their page. When Yahoo! uses 146 different IP addresses to spider 146 pages, it artificially inflates the online users count"

This suggestion received a huge amount of support from users prompting Yahoo! to make a change. From the Yahoo! search blog:

"We're reducing our crawling machines by a significant amount with this update, so you might have observed a significant reduction in crawl load from us along with fewer machine IP addresses hitting you over the last few days.

The new crawler continues to improve comprehensiveness and freshness of coverage while also enhancing crawl efficiency, which reduces spurious load on websites."

The new and improved search spider also features an updated search results index, with the resulting rank changes now appearing in search results. If your website has dropped its ranking with this latest update, try our new and improved Y-Boost service which improves your Yahoo! ranking with 5 guaranteed directory listings each month.

Tuesday, August 21

Compete With Pay-as-You-Go Search Analytics

Online analytics company, Compete, is set to launch their new pay-as-you-go search analytics service on September 12. Compete Search Analytics will offer small to medium companies' access to competitive research into consumer behaviour online, for a 'per-usage' fee.

Compete Search Analytics provide information on 'what, when, and how' consumers search and interact online. Offering users data on keyword referrals, site referrals and site comparisons Compete are sourcing their information from search engines, Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Windows Live, Ask.com and AOL; Compete's private label desktop applications and toolbars and ISP data. The new service also suggests keywords, finds search terms that will drive engaged visitors to your website, and tracks performance of keywords against competitors.

Jeremy Crane, Compete's Search Expert, told Search Engine Watch,

"If you have a Web site, you have to know how to utilize search, or else you're going to be behind in the game. A lot of people have not had access to this kind of data. There are some keyword tools that offer query-level data, but that's not the same thing. Since about 40 percent of searches go unanswered, and don't create referrals, we take those out of the picture for marketers."

The unique pricing model means users can purchase 'credits' online to pay for the number of reports or results they need! For smaller companies Compete Search Analytics looks set to be a revolution in search marketing, competitive research that's easy and cost effective to obtain. Says Crane "Whatever your level of experience, in a few short clicks our service will make you more successful with your search marketing programs; it's that intuitive."

I'll be very interested to see whether this new service will back that claim... whether Compete will improve your chances of doing just that?

Google Sued by American Airlines for Trademark Infringement

Google is being sued by airline giant American Airlines, for trademark infringement. American Airlines are not happy that Google allows AdWords advertisers to bid on the company's trademarked names.

In a complaint filed by the company, American Airlines allege that Google is violating their trademark(s) by allowing competitors to bid on their company names in Google Adwords. Reading through the document, here are some of the keywords in question:

American Airlines
American Airlines Deal
Free AA Travel Offers
americanairlines.com
AmericanAirlines
American Airline
AmericanAirlines Com
www.americanairlines.com
American Air Lines

The document also outlines how the AdWords keyword suggestion tool brings up suggestions for other trademarked keywords. It's interesting to note that Google do not allow any advertisers to bid on the "Google" trademark.

While this type of lawsuit is nothing new to Google, it's the first time a company as large as American Airlines has challenged the search giant. Eric Goldman, a university law professor, suggests that this lawsuit could end up costing American Airlines more than they think:

"my working theory is that this was not a good lawsuit for American Airlines to bring. I've noted many times before that lawsuits over consumer "diversion" often cost more than the lost profits from the allegedly diverted consumers."

American Airlines have issued a press release regarding the incident, claiming that while they want the trademark issue sorted, they are keen to maintain a positive relationship with Google.

Monday, August 20

Yahoo! Overhauls Yahoo! Local to Give Their Users a Voice

Last week, Yahoo! announced an overhaul to their Yahoo! Local service where improvements would harness the voice of their millions of user reviews, ratings and other consumer generated content to bolster the value of the service and give local businesses a real chance of search exposure.

We've speculated in our own research that local search services such as Google Maps, Yahoo! Local and MSN Local, rely on factors such as reviews and listings on other local sites to determine their local rankings. Now Yahoo! have openly acknowledged that their new overhaul includes a revised algorithm which will use the valuable contributions of users to influence their results.

According to the announcement post:

"We've completely overhauled the site to make it easier to contribute your opinion and through a new, updated algorithm, we're making sure that search results take your ratings and reviews into account. We want to make sure that people's contributions to Yahoo! Local count in more ways than one."

Not only will the new enhancements rely on user reviews to help determine which local businesses are best and accordingly rank higher (a debate they are happy to let their users decide), but they've also rolled some additional features that will make it easier for users to contribute to the debate and make the local search experience more interactive.

The key new features as outlined on the post are:

Commenting on User Reviews - No longer will it feel like shouting into the wind when you write a review. Now the people who benefit from your tips can reply back. You'll also be able to track comments on your reviews from your My Local page.
Weekender - Offers a weekly selection of events, movies (including show times and reviews), dining picks, and more to help you plan your weekend.
More "Local Buzz" - Shows the top-moving search terms in your hometown with a new search cloud and exposes the most recent reviews of businesses in your area to see what people are buzzing about.
Best Local Events - Taps into the Upcoming social events database to surface the best events in your hometown.
Most Popular - Highlights the best of a city in the key categories of Restaurants, Health & Beauty, and Home & Garden.
My Local Improvements - A new "save for later" feature so you can quickly archive those hidden gems you uncover along with your recent reviews, tags, and collections.

So as the local search juggernaut continues to gather momentum, developments such as this latest overhaul by Yahoo! mean that small businesses with a local focus need to jump aboard and start building their online local profiles. It now means encouraging customers to contribute reviews to help them build a reputation.

Yahoo! Gets One Back on Google in Customer Satisfaction

These days, it's not often that you hear anyone outdoing search giant Google on any playing field, but a recent American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) report has seen Yahoo! take top honors in terms of customer satisfaction.

Released last week by the University of Michigan, the American Customer Satisfaction Index e-business survey details the satisfaction level of consumers across a category that covers search engines, online news, e-commerce and portals, based on the feedback of 70,000 customers.

Yahoo! gained 3 points on their 2006 score to take the top spot in the category with a rating of 79 out of 100. Considering the turmoil that Yahoo! has faced over the past few months, both shareholders and Yahoo! execs will be hoping this accolade marks a change of fortune.

For Google, a 3 point drop to 78 represents the lowest ACSI score they've received since the survey started in 2000. Their declining rating echoes an ever growing chorus of discontent from their devoted users. Not expect panic at the Googleplex, as they still stand well above many of their competitors.

Ask.com had a stellar result with a 4 point increase to 75 this year. This is a remarkable effort considering the survey was conducted before the much applauded launch of Ask3D, and even better given that the whole category experienced an overall decline of 1.3 points - the first decline in the category so far.

AOL was the biggest loser this year shedding a remarkable 7 points. With AOL trailing Google in search, Yahoo! in the portal stakes and struggling on many other fronts, there'll be some serious discussions in the AOL board room.

The ACSI survey highlights that while customer satisfaction is relatively strong in the category, the big industry players run the risk of losing favor if they don't continue to listen to their users and maintain a customer-centric approach to privacy, development and innovation.

Tuesday, August 14

Search Engines Bare All Their Privacy Details

CNET News.com is making headlines with their probe into search engine privacy. Equating "trying to learn how your favorite search engine protects your privacy can be as frustrating as a "Where's Waldo?" book", CNET were prepared to ask the privacy questions for us. The five biggest search engines - Google, AOL, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Ask.com, received an eight-question survey, to ascertain just what their position is on privacy!

1. What search-related data - including IP addresses, cookie IDs, user identities, and search terms - do you retain?
2. How long do you retain this data?
3. If you retain data for a limited period of time, is it completely deleted (in such a way that the data and backups cannot be recovered, even under court order) or is it anonymized instead?
4. If the data is anonymized, exactly how do you do this?
5. Do you do behavioral targeting, meaning showing ads to users based on their behavior across multiple queries?
6. If you do, is there a way for users to opt out of behavioral targeting?
7. Do you use knowledge about your users (such as ZIP code, e-mail address, gender, or birth date) obtained through user registration to deliver targeted ads on your search engine?
8. Do you use knowledge about the identities of your users' instant messaging or e-mail correspondents when using those services, or the contents of those communications, to deliver targeted ads on your search engine?

And... here's a summary of what each search engine had to say about their privacy policies

AOL
Search related data (IP addresses, cookie IDs, search terms and user identities) may be retained by AOL for up to 13 months, they do conduct behavioral targeting (and allow you to opt-out of it), however don't use your registration data to target you with ads.

Ask.com
Ask.com launched a completely redesigned site in June and with this comes some great new privacy features. Ask.com will soon launch AskEraser (maybe by the end of the year), a new system that means users will not have their search data retained for longer than a few hours. Ask doesn't use behavioral targeting, and do not use your details to serve you targeted ads!

Google
Not surprisingly, the longest, and most ambiguous, answers came from Google! The search giant may keep your search data for up to 18 months; they're big on developing behavioral targeting but don't give you the option of opting-out, however won't deliver you targeted ads in their results.

Microsoft
Microsoft may retain your IP address, cookie ID, and search terms for 18 months, however, they assure us that this information could not be used to identify a specific user. Microsoft users are also treated to behavioral targeting, and your registration details enable them to deliver targeted ads while you're searching.

Yahoo!
Yahoo! can keep your search related data for up to 13 months, and will target you with ads, based on your previous search behaviour. Your registration details (ZIP code, gender, birthdate or e-mail address) can also be used to deliver you targeted advertising, while you are logged on!

I have to admit that I'm not one to fear that Big Brother is watching. If I'm not comfortable with the data that a sign-up, or registration requires, then I simply won't enter it or won't register - other than that, I'm actually quite lax about giving my details away. Even so, it is good to know that even the biggest companies are called to account for how they control the information we give them, and if they seem less than transparent about the exact details, maybe that's because some of it's private?

Google AdWords Algorithm Update

Do you run an AdWords campaign and want to see your business in that top ad position? Now it may be within your reach. In the upcoming weeks, Google will be tweaking their AdWords ranking algorithm which is used to determine which ads are displayed in the top spot, above organic search results.

The updated algorithm will continue to use the Google quality score and cost per click (CPC) elements in the formula, with a small change for the first ad position. Instead of using the advertisers actual cost per click, it will factor in the maximum CPC bid for each advertiser. This will allow advertisers to have more control over their ads showing in the top position.

From the Google AdWords blog:

"Actual CPC is determined, in part, by the bidding behavior of the advertisers below you. This means that your ad's chance of being promoted to a top spot could be constrained by a factor you cannot influence. By considering your ad's maximum CPC, a value you set, you will have more control over achieving top ad placement."

Let's look at a quick example. Say I have an ad with a maximum CPC of $0.25, but there are no competitors for my keywords; then I'm only paying the default cost of $0.05 per click. If any new advertisers enter the market for this keyword, I will be credited for my maximum CPC bid of $0.25, giving me greater control over retaining that top spot.

Some bloggers have raised concerns over the new formula, saying it will allow the system to be abused by advertisers willing to pay more and is just a move to increase Google profits. It should be noted that Google still use quality score as the greatest determining factor in top ad placement, making it unlikely for junk advertisers to buy their way to the top. But as far as increasing Google's profits go - it's likely that some advertisers will see an increase in the price of their keywords. As always, let us know what you think via our blog comments!

Boost Your Sales with Testimonials

Testimonials are a very powerful form of word-of-mouth advertising which helps advertisers attach a human element to the product or services they are selling. Your testimonial may be the clincher which helps turn an interested prospect into a paying customer.

But how do we use them for maximum impact? According to copyblogger, there are a number of best practice principles that can be used when using testimonials on your website:

Don't Over-Edit
Testimonials work best when they are written how we speak. Small grammar and language quirks help the reader connect and indicate the testimonial is real.

Use Testimonials that Fit
Place testimonials that are relevant next to the product or service you're selling. There's no use confusing customers with an unrelated testimonial.

Address Objections
If the testimonial addresses a common concern about a products performance, it can immediately increase consumer confidence about your product and company.

Don't Fake it
Never fake a testimonial, as readers can usually see straight through them. Aside from this, many countries have hefty fines for those caught using fakes.

Encourage Specifics
Ask your customers to give specifics when describing results or benefits from your business. Eg: Rather than "we saw a huge increase" ask them to state the exact improvement, such as "we saw a 25% increase".

Always remember to actively solicit testimonials from your customers. If a customer contacts you to thank you for your service, or lets you know how much they value your product, ask them for a testimonial! It's a great way to enhance your conversion online.

Google Instant Indexing - Rev Up Your Rankings

Have you noticed that Google is indexing content almost instantly?

A month or so ago, I saw that our blog content was getting indexed quicker than usual in Google's core web results and didn't really think that much of it. Then over the last few weeks, as I've been scouring industry news, and cross referencing information, I saw that some of the major bloggers were being indexed almost instantly - within hours.

Last week Matt Cutts blogged about a similar observation in his "Minty Fresh Indexing" post, so chances are it wasn't an "optical illusion" on my part. As he put it:

"It takes a lot of good design and infrastructure to be able to refresh large numbers of pages that fast. Congrats to the Googlers who are improving Google's ability to re-crawl, index, and score web documents quickly."

So here's the opportunity - if Google is indexing content within hours, it offers website owners the chance to rank prominently for key terms and searches quicker than ever, and it's through blogs that this is most easily achieved.

We've promoted the virtues of blogging as a traffic and ranking tool for years, as it provides businesses with the opportunity to regularly generate keyword rich content for their websites. With Google indexing content within hours, now more than ever, website owners should be embracing the power of blogs.

Now before spammers think this is another way to game Google - the impact of this rapid indexing isn't available to every man and his dog straight away. Just like any good whitehat SEO approach, it takes time and diligence (the bloggers being indexed instantly have been blogging regularly for some time).

So if you want to Rev up your Ranking thanks to Google's unbelievably fast indexing power - get to it and start creating relevant content "regularly". For some ideas about blogging for your business, visit our previous posts:

Business Blogs: Boosting Your Website Traffic

Top 6 Reasons Why Your Company Needs a Blog

Making Your Blog Better