Ah yes another glorious Monday.  The beginning of the work week and for me another blog post.  So after some thinking I finally figured out what to write about…….keywords.  Keywords are an important aspect of any search engine marketing campaign whether it’s PPC or SEO.  Developing a good solid keyword list is a tedious task.  There are a few steps you must take to get the best possible list that will improve your ROI.  Now on to the important part of this post…the steps, so pay attention!

The first step is to identify your target market and apply this to your next step; brainstorming.  Brainstorming will take some time.  If your target market is for a younger generation, keep that in mind.  Remember that people in our generation think, speak, and search differently than an earlier generation.  In your brainstorming step you will be thinking of all keywords possible.  Start a master list spreadsheet and start loading it up.  This is your rough list so just keep putting in keywords you think will work.  Take notes and put everything you think of down on paper.  Once you’re done brainstorming and coming up with keywords, TAKE A BREAK!  That was a lot of thinking and writing so take a break so your brain don’t melt.

Now that you have your master keyword list it’s time to go over it and get it more specific.  Take out any doubles you might have put in.  Remember to use the keyword matching options: broad match, phrase match, exact match, and negative match.  (I’ll go into more detail on those another time)  Just remember to make your keyword list very specific to what you’re advertising.  The more broad your keywords the more impressions/clicks you might get but less conversions.   And don’t forget about misspellings.  Typos are a very common thing on search engines, so keep that in mind when your compiling your list.

Try to make multiple lists and test different keywords.  As usual testing is important, just because you think you have a solid list doesn’t mean anything.  In the online marketing business there are surprises around every corner and I cannot stress enough how important testing is.  After some time you will find yourself with a strong keyword list and it will greatly help your business.  Just take your time and think about everything logically and you’ll be fine.

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Filed under: Uncategorized by Matt Fern
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Google has been generating a lot of buzz around the net this week with images popping up in the sponsored links section. This feature is seemingly only being tested in certain areas as many, including myself, have not been able to duplicate the results. The immediate WOW factor is high and should, without a doubt, help attract more attention to your ad and ultimately help Google to provide the best results to you. Let’s look at this from another perspective, mine.

Does anyone remember the old TV Guide channel? It used to simply show you what was on, they may have played some music and the listings filled the majority of the screen, then they started adding some advertisements (I can live with that, they need to stay on and I think it is a useful service), then they shrunk the listings to show the ads slightly larger, then they shrunk the listings even more so they could run a rubbish channel on top of the information I really wanted to see. I don’t actually care about Kimberly Caldwell interviewing a Jonas brother, I just don’t, but I digress.

The point is, doesn’t this seem familiar and applicable to the current Google situation? Their natural search listings have been getting smaller and smaller to make room for more and more sponsored links, how small will they actually get, will they become secondary to the ads, will Kimberly Caldwell appear in the search bar? Let’s hope that it doesn’t get to this point. I am all for making the sponsored listings more interesting to look at but not at the expense of the natural ones.

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Filed under: Adwords, Google, PPC Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engines by Dean Karasinski
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It seems like FaceBook has had a busy couple of days. First they announce that they just paid $50 million dollars for FriendFeed, and now comes word that they are testing something called FaceBook lite. As someone who is sometimes considered a FaceBook stalker, I just had to find out more about FaceBook lite.

My favorite part of this story may just be how the rumor got started in the first place. FaceBook let the cat out of the bag by posting invites to people who were not supposed to be invited to the program. I will never understand how this happens. I hope that person got fired. Out of a cannon. Into the sun (Futurama references will be a common occurrence in my posts).

Basically, it’s a simplified version of the normal FaceBook site (or those of you with iPhones, just imagine that, but loading on a computer). Lite will only have the basic functions of FaceBook, including status updates, friend request, photos, and the ability to write on and view a person’s wall.

FaceBook lite is mainly going to be used in countries where internet speeds are not as quick and stable as they are here. Sometimes when I’m loading up FaceBook on my broadband connection, it gets a little bogged down, so I can see exactly why this could be helpful. Currently it’s being tested in India, but there are plans to move that into other areas like China and Russia.

Many people are thinking that this could be FaceBook’s first step into a war with Twitter. I can see why people would think that, but as much as I would like to see these two internet giants go head to head, I don’t think this move really has anything to do with Twitter (although I will be fighting alongside my FaceBook brethren). Instead, I think it’s just to try and increase FaceBook’s web presence in new areas as much as they can. China and India are currently ranked number 1 and 2 in population, respectively. With about 2.4 billion people, why wouldn’t FaceBook want to do anything possible to grow in these areas?

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Filed under: Social Media by Chris Cremen
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Most people think that Social Media has nothing to do with Social Marketing. I mean, why would you advertise your products or services on sites like MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter? Isn’t that just a waste of time? The answer is a resounding “NO!”

Sure, back in the day when Social Media was just beginning, there wasn’t much to it. MySpace was the reigning king and it was largely a popularity contest to see who could get the most friends. MySpace is still around and a lot of people still use it to advertise, just like a lot of people have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon (mostly a barrage of celebrities). But by and large, the users are congregating elsewhere: Facebook. Back in 2004, Facebook was originally only open to a select number of college students, those of which needed to have a valid college email address to access the site. Facebook started catching on though, and in 2005 it was open to high school students. By 2006, anybody over the age of 13 with a valid email address could join. Facebook started becoming less and less about a Who’s Who for students and more like an avenue for users to share anything and everything. Did you hear about that new band that played at the bar last night? Check out their Facebook page!  Companies can create fan pages and applications for their products and services, which have the ability to be viewed by Facebook’s 250 million users. With more than 8 million users becoming fans of pages daily, you’d be crazy not to jump on that gravy train!

Facebook isn’t just for the kids anymore. The number of adults on Facebook is steadily increasing: the fastest growing demographic is users 35 years of age and up. And you thought that this was just some silly little adolescent phase. Sure, young adults ages 18-25 still make up 43% of Facebook’s daily users, but that percentage is rapidly shifting. Because Facebook’s prime user ages span from 18-65, it is a prime candidate for Social Marketing. Where else are you going to find such a dynamic selection of potential consumers?

Maybe you think catering to the Facebook market sounds like a lot of work for very little ROI. Sure, you could go the direct route and throw some ads up on there, but that’s not how you’re going to reach your viewers. The interactive aspect of Facebook is without a doubt the basis of its appeal. You can figure out exactly what all your friends are doing at this exact moment with Status Updates, you can see what site they recently became a fan of, and you can see the pictures from their weekend out. All of this is clearly visible on the front page of the News Feed, which allows users to not only see what their friends have been up to, but let’s them explore new hobbies and interests as well. And with the rise of smartphones like the iPhone and Blackberry, people don’t have to wait until they get home to catch up. The truth is, people are tuning in to Facebook regardless of whether or not you’re advertising on there. And if you can get your company circulating around Facebook to even just a few viewers, that number can quickly multiply. Even if only one person becomes a fan of your page, your page will show up on that person’s News Feed. And then all of that person’s friends are easily exposed to your page, making it easier than ever for them to stumble across your products. Start using your Status Update to let users know about new products and specials, and your reach becomes even wider. Put simply: more viewers facilitates more traffic which can result in an increase in leads/sales.

So you tell me, who wouldn’t want to be on Facebook?

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Filed under: Networking, Social Marketing, Social Media by Caren Romanyschyn
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Lately it seems that everyone and their brother is calling themselves a Search Marketing Professional, but what do they actually know about it and how do you find out if they really know what they are talking about or if they are just a student in a dorm room trying to make some money and will leave your AdWords account to fend for itself?

If you are looking for someone to manage your PPC Marketing check out PPC Hero and their article titled “10 Questions You Should Ask a Potential New PPC Management Firm” then consider 7evenLeafClover for all your needs If you still have your heart set on doing it yourself then let me offer you some tips:

Account Structure

Account structure is arguably the most important aspect of your PPC campaign. If you have put together a great keyword list and then just threw it all into a campaign named “Company PPC Campaign” then you have just thrown all of your hard work out the window.

Structuring your account not only helps you to better organize your keyword list it also has some advantages when it comes to your overall online marketing strategy. Lets say you sell Red, Blue and Green widgets. If you through all of your keywords into the same account you wouldn’t be able to get a very clear picture of how each type of widget was performing and selling. It would take a long time to sort through this data to make any sense of it. If you have some account structure and did something like a Campaign for each type of widget you would be able to see what keywords were working for each type of widget, you would also be able to write custom ad text for each campaign to really tailor the ad to what you are selling.

Negative Keywords

Negative Keywords are another important aspect of your PPC campaign, while in my opinion much less important than account structure they are important nonetheless. Let’s say you sell widgets for camping the red, blue and green kind again. Your keywords consist of red widgets, blue widgets and green widgets, you are getting a lot of traffic but you see that a lot of it is just wasted or has nothing to do with your product. Many keywords like red widgets for weddings or green widgets for cameras keep showing up. These are not qualified leads to your site so you would set negative keywords in your account to combat keywords like this from wasting your money. By making weddings and cameras negative keywords you will ensure that you are honing in on your niche of widgets for camping. This is one of the easiest ways to optimize your account.

Match Types and Long Tail

One of the easiest ways to cast a wide net while still staying focused on your target market is to use the multiple match types (broad, exact and phrase). Using these match types will help you find how people search for your products and then you can create new keywords based around that. If some of them aren’t working for you turn them off or create new negative keywords  to combat their negative effects. Long tail keywords are another great way to help you get quality leads. Long tail keywords are often found by using a full product name, through phrase match keywords or just through trial and error. If someone is searching for a product in such a specific fashion (big red camping widget with three headlights) then they are probably ready to buy and if you have that word or something similar as one of your keywords I can almost guarantee that you will make that sale.

So go take a look at your adwords account, make these changes and let us know what changes happen as a result of them. I guarantee that things will start happening to your account that I didn’t mention here (*cough* Higher Quality Score *cough* More Sales *cough*) Excuse me, the smog here is Los Angeles is really rough sometimes.

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Filed under: Adwords, Google, PPC Marketing, Search Engine Marketing by Dean Karasinski
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Over the past two weeks I’ve been explaining about the whole Adwords certification thing, and now I’m a certified individual (not to mention we are a certified company now as well)  Now I’m going to talk about a few things that can increase your sale and profits.  Adwords has all sorts of tools and options to optimize your accounts.  Even with all these options one of the best ways to improve your profits is your landing page.  Conversion’s the word.  You can get all the clicks you want but if you can’t get any conversions you’re just throwing money away.

So what is a landing page?  A landing page is the page visitors arrive at after clicking your ad.  It is important that your landing page is simple, easy to understand, and matches the ad that was clicked on to get to the page.  When deciding your landing page it is important that you think of the user.  Think of what they are seeing through their eyes.  Think of all the thoughts that are going through their head.  “Does this site look trustworthy”, “is this the right place”, “how much time will this take?”  The site must me user friendly.

Make sure that your landing page works in conjunction with your ad text.  In other words if the ad text is describing a certain product, make sure that the landing page takes the user to that products page.  It may frustrate the user if they click the ad and then have to go search for the product.  Remember your goal is to get the conversion.  If the user clicks the ad and get frustrated then just backs out of your website you’re not making any money.

Your landing page is key to making profits.  Just keep in mind these two rules about landing pages and you should be fine:  1) make the content useful, relevant, and trustworthy.  2) Make the site easy to navigate.  Landing pages are not that hard but one little mistake can completely ruin your traffic/conversions.  One of the most important things to do is TEST, TEST, and TEST!!  Try different things.  One little difference can make a huge difference in sales.  After you make a few changes and test them, you will be able to see what works best for you and your customers.

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Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engines, Site Design by Matt Fern
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Your website is your online business card. You’ve probably heard this many times, but it’s true. If you want people to take you seriously, you need a good looking website. I’ll give you a couple quick tips on how to improve upon what you have. Some of these might be no-brainers, but bear with me and hopefully you can glean something from it.

Color Scheme
Your colors have to be relevant to what your purpose is. Someone selling organic vegetables shouldn’t have a site designed with hot pink as their primary color. Instead, green would be the obvious choice for them. Keep in mind your visitors. Just because you like a color doesn’t mean they will too.

Pictures
Everyone loves to have pictures on their site, but seriously, there is a such thing as too many. If a page takes a long time to load on a broadband connection, just imagine what it’ll do to a dial-up connection (yes, they still exist). Plus, keep in mind your picture file size. With HTML, you can shrink the size of a picture, but it doesn’t shrink the size of the file, so the whole thing loads in the browser. This is especially important to understand if you take pictures with a digital camera. The file sizes are 2MB or more per picture, when really they should be under 100KB for the website. Makes a big difference, and even with a fast connection they load slow.

Layout
This one is easy. Does your website look cluttered? Does it make sense where everything is laid out? Do you REALLY need that much stuff on one page? If it’s hard to find something on a webpage, odds are it’s too cluttered or the layout is done poorly. Your layout has to make sense to your visitor. People today have a tiny attention span, so if they can’t find what they want immediately, they’ll go somewhere else. The navigation of your website should be clearly marked, all links should look like links, and major items should pop out to the visitor.

These are just three quick examples of site design tips. I’ll provide more later.

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Filed under: Site Design by Tim Caspersen
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It’s been about 18 months since Linkshare debuted their new interface, but I have yet to stop using their old one. I think the fact that the old interface has still been functional for so long should make it clear that the new showing was far from great.  As a matter of fact, it was quite awful.  But now comes word that on August 11^th, the original interface will be “retired” and I will be forced to use the new interface.  I have used the new interface occasionally just to see if my feelings for it have changed, and I no longer despise it like the second coming of Family Guy (or the first coming of that awful show).

When they first launched the new “Publisher Dashboard,” my biggest complaint was that the commission numbers never matched up.  I would log into the old interface and my commission numbers would be anywhere from $200 to $2,000 off.  That’s a big discrepancy, especially since Linkshare numbers always seem a little lower then what they actually are.  But now I notice that the numbers are finally spot on.  Now, if they could just make their commission numbers update as quickly as they should.

One thing I will really miss from the old interface is getting a detailed report in just 1 click.  I can log into my account on the old interface, go to the bottom of the screen, and chose the dates and report type I want to see right there.  And since I usually want a sales report for the current month, all I had to do was hit “go,” and I had it.  Now I have to go into the reports section, and deal with a drop down box.  The new interface has plenty of white space at the bottom; they should really consider adding that feature there.

They also changed the display of the report when you download it.  Instead of being a nice and clean, you get bogged down in useless information and a stupid layout.  First, they reduced the text size from 11 to 8.  Not a major change, but enough to be irritating.  They also added a delightfully boring shade of grey to the top row of the report.  I don’t know about you, but when I think of ways to liven up a spreadsheet, the first thing I think of is throwing some grey in there.  Thanks, Linkshare.  Also, the report now includes the all valuable Advertised ID number as the first column instead of the Merchant Name.  Since Linkshare thinks this number is more important than the merchant name, I am going to start to refer to merchants solely as their number.  It looks like I need to do more with 2661, what do you guys think?  My final rant dealing with their new report is the use of a border around each cell in the report, with all the other cells being whited out.  How many people when making reports actually do this?  All this does is create another step I have to do when making a report, removing boarders from cells.  The whole “updated” reporting part of the new interface really sucks.

Perhaps the biggest thing I love about the new interface has nothing to do with the interface at all, but rather the login.  That’s right, Linkshare finally upgraded their login to let browsers recognize and store passwords.  I know this is not what most people will be thrilled about, but it’s comforting to know that I no longer have to type in a password to log into my account.  While some people may consider that a security feature, I always considered it annoying and it made me wish ill things to whoever set it up. Maybe that they would stub their toe or that their pen would run out of ink.  That would show them.

The only feature that I have actively logged into the new interface to use since its inception is the Last Payment info.  As a matter of fact, it’s located right on the home page.  Nothing makes me want to do more with Linkshare than to see that number every time I login.  I don’t even think it was ever actually possible to find this information in the original interface since 2005.  But now I get to login to my account every week and see exactly how much is being sent to me.  And while opening the envelope from Linkshare each week was similar to the excitement of opening a birthday card from grandma to see how much she sent me, knowing how much was coming let me plan my budget far better.

I now have less than a week left of the old interface.  I am sure that once I am forced to use the new one, my complaint list will grow and I will find new feature that I like.  But I am going to guess that if I do another post about the interface, the complaint list is what will grow the fastest.  What do you guys think of the new Linkshare Publisher Dashboard?  Am I being too hard on it?

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Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Linkshare by Chris Cremen
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Ok, so last week I delved into the daunting world of Affiliate Marketing, via Share A Sale. While I admit that I may have been a little overly harsh in my criticism of their interface, I think the general sentiment still rings true: user friendly, Share A Sale is not.

If you check out the comments on my last post, you’ll see a message from Brian Littleton. Who is Brian Littleton, you may ask? He is the President and CEO of Share A Sale, and he was nice enough to post a few tips on how to navigate through the search options on his network. While I feel honored that Mr. Littleton took the time to shoot over a message, the original problem still remains. I mean, not everyone can be lucky enough to have the President and CEO of the network take time out of their day to help them out when they don’t understand how to use search options in Share A Sale.

I think my main problem with Share A Sale is more of a design issue than anything. The categories are just kinda out there on the top of the page, the subcategories are a little on the small side, and the overall logo doesn’t stand out. Bottom line? It’s just not pretty. Sure, that seems like a trivial criticism, but it’s really not. How many sites have you gone to where it looks like the designer just didn’t put in the effort? Did you want to stay on the site very long? Nope. I bet you high-tail it out of there the first chance you get. Because if the web design is poor, then what is the quality of service going to be like? Chances are, they are one and the same.

Now, I don’t want any of you to get the wrong idea. Yes, it’s true, there are a few things I am not too stoked about when it comes to Share A Sale. But I have to say, they are one of the networks I really enjoy using. One of the major reasons I like Share A Sale is because they make it super easy to direct link to a product. Believe it or not, this is like a foreign concept to most networks. Commission Junction will sometimes maybe if they feel like it let you stick a product link in their affiliate links, but I wouldn’t hold your breath on that one. Linkshare just recently created a LinkBuilder that lets you create your own links, but before that the only way to get a specific product link was to hope you could find it in their “Individual Product” section. And good luck with that.

Here’s where Share A Sale comes in. Share A Sale and me go way back because they’ve been hooking me up with product links from the very start. All you have to do is head over to their “Get Links” section and skim down the list until you see “Create a Custom Link to a Page.” Once you click on that baby, it’s pretty straighforward; pick your merchant, enter your link, and hit the “Create Custom Link” button. Viola! You have an instantly live, custom link. It really doesn’t get much better than that for a blogger such as myself.

So Share A Sale, I’m sorry. I said some things in the heat of the moment that may have been a little unkind, but you have to admit that there is some room for improvement. I’m sure there are some things that you feel bad about too. Look, the point I’m trying to make is that we’re good together and I don’t want to mess with what we’ve got. I’m glad we had this talk.

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Filed under: Affiliate Marketing by Caren Romanyschyn
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It’s me again back to talk about the lovely Google Adwords exam.  Last week I went over the requirements of what is needed to become a Google Adwords certified individual and some of the perks that come with it.  But sadly there are some down sides to this whole process.

First of all the main problem I have come to realize is the time factor.  After you meet all the requirements for the exam you should have a pretty good idea of what you’re doing on Adwords (which is 90 days for those who haven’t been paying attention) During the 90 days you’re going to want spend some time going over the lessons Google provides (http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/text/index.html) The learning center has a large amount of information that will take a while to read through.  It’s a long and tedious process but if you are taking this seriously it’s a necessity.  So the initial 90 days plus a good study session in the learning center will take a good chunk of your time.

Also becoming certified does not guarantee work, and it doesn’t teach you a sound strategy.  Just because you are certified doesn’t mean everything will just fall into place for you.  There’s still a lot of work involved and still A LOT more to learn.

The final downfall isn’t really a downfall at all.  There is a cost involved, $50.  That’s right fifty bucks just to take the test, and if you fail your first time and have to retake it, it’s another fifty dollars.  The upside to this is that it shows your clients you take your job seriously and are knowledgeable about Google Adwords and can help them to make money (everybody likes money)

I know my posts might come off a little “flip-flopped.”  One paragraph I’m telling you how great it is to be Adwords certified and the next I’m telling you it’s a bit overrated.  The bottom line is credibility.  Being certified gives you and your company credibility and an advantage over your competitors.

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Filed under: Adwords, Google, Search Engine Marketing by Matt Fern
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