I mean, look at those studs reppin’ their TargetClick gear proudly.

It’s so comforting and inspiring to know that when I come in each day, I’ll be working with people who aren’t here to just fill the hours from 9-5. They are here because they are driven by what they do and are passionate about the success of their clients and each of the services they provide.

From Reputation Management to Social Media strategies and everything in between, the TargetClick team infuses vitality and excitement into everything they do.  When you’re prepping for college graduation and getting ready to head out into the working world, there’s the occasional panic attack that makes you feel like all your dreams and ambitions are going to fall to the wayside when you settle into a regular work schedule. Being part of the TargetClick team has helped alleviate those fears and made me realize that, if you’re doing something you care about; your dreams don’t have to dissipate even a little.

Not only is that a really cool concept, but it makes learning the parts of the industry I was unfamiliar with much easier and more exciting.  From learning a lot about SEO to refining and stretching my social media and copywriting skills to new bounds, I’ve appreciated the support and trust that TargetClick puts in their interns.

The power in working with a team that is passionate and unafraid to push limits is most evident in the returns their campaigns see for their clients. While I was working on a case study for a blog’s success, I saw that traffic had increased 500% since the blog had started. Needless to say, I was impressed by the numbers. However, I was more impressed with how excited the team was about how all the parts of the campaign had come together to bring success for the client.

Trish Dorman, a comrade in the TargetClick internship process, said her experience confirmed what I’ve come to know about the team in a short time:

“We learn by doing, and I couldn’t have learned the digital marketing world any better than at TargetClick.  Not only was this internship more than worthwhile academically, I also met some wonderful people that were first co-workers, and now friends.”

I’m excited to see what the rest of my time here at TargetClick brings, but one thing I don’t doubt a bit is that whatever I’m doing, it will be infused with excitement, innovation and passion. The TargetClick team wouldn’t let me operate any other way.

I recently read the article “The War on Free Clicks” published by WordStream, which after reading invoked feelings of panic and fear that my chosen specialty in SEO would soon be obsolete, and that everything I believed to be true about search engine marketing was incorrect. Before you begin panicking just as I did, you should know that this isn’t how the story ends. Search engine optimization isn’t going anywhere, and in fact it’s more important than ever to rank organically (non-paid search results) as search engine optimization continues to expand.

The study reports that the sponsored results on Google made up for two-thirds of clicks for high intent commercial keyword searches, searchers that were ready to buy favored the paid ads versus the organic results. On the offense was the sponsored ads camp, taking over space on Google results pages with engaging ad copy and pushing organic listings below the fold. This invasion only added insult to injury after Google’s recent updates to control SEO spam and search privacy made it harder for honest companies to rank for organic listings.  In case you haven’t noticed, here’s proof that PPC invaded organic listing territory:

When I overcame my initial panic, I’ll admit that I started preparing for an epic battle, Braveheart style. Before things could go down, I did more research to exploit the enemy’s weaknesses, only to realize there is no battle after all. SEO and PPC are not, nor will ever be replacements for each other. They both have their places on search engine results pages, and can deliver impressive results when working together.

When it comes to the buyer’s cycle, organic (non-paid) and paid search marketing  go hand in hand as they serve individuals best at different points in the search funnel and when used together, deliver a greater number of traffic, and thus conversions. Studies show that organic results have a better click through rate for searches that are informational, local, and almost ready to buy. So, organic listings best serve searchers that aren’t quite ready to buy but are actively looking. According to new research, 90% of searchers at this stage specifically click on organic listings, and 87% of those searches in the auto industry clicked on listings in the top 3 positions. Just imagine for a moment what that kind of website traffic could mean for your business.

The key is to capture these visitors while they’re actively looking, so they’re more likely to buy from you than your competitor who ranks in the organic listings. Google released a study stating that 63% of new vehicle purchasers start their search with a particular brand in mind, yet only 20% actually buy the vehicle they first researched. Undoubtedly, auto shoppers are turning to multiple screens to research during their car shopping process, and dealerships with organic listings for these searches capture them early on. Additionally, while on the lot, 51% of non-brand loyal shoppers take pictures through mobile devices, 49% check reviews, and 44% search for comparisons. These people are really doing their homework, and if your business doesn’t appear in organic listings during their process it will severely cost you.

And if you think the deal is done the minute a customer rides off into the sunset in their shiny new car, you’re wrong. This is when brand loyalty (and the next sale) begins. SEO is incredibly important to your dealership before, during, and after customers are actively shopping for their next vehicle. And you better believe the dealers that appear in Google search results and assist the shopper during their research could be walking away with your customers. You see, it’s all about connecting with the customer in the moments that matter.

We arrived at the Rosen Shingle Creek hotel on Monday evening and checked in to our rooms. Orlando in May was a welcome sight after the unwelcome snowfall in Iowa just a week before.

We checked in and were gifted with standard conference-style credentials (everybody loves those).

Check out the Mudd and TargetClick Booth (number 530) all set up prior to the start of the conference.

This is where the team gathered to meet with dealers as they moved through the exposition. It didn’t hurt that we were right by all the food tables, so we got a lot of traffic.

Dealers stopped by to learn about what we could offer them. We heard a lot of “Oh, when did Mudd get into digital?” so we were able to educate a lot of people on TargetClick and our digital marketing services. Sorry, no pictures of this part – I was too busy chatting!

I was glad we were able to attend a couple of sessions and learn more about what the dealers are learning. I sat in on the Wednesday morning Keynote by Avinash Kaushik, a Googler.

He talked a lot about a user’s landing experience, and I was nodding along as I thought about the value and success of our Conversion Pages.

Rob Mudd made a great presentation on Wednesday afternoon about Certified Pre-Owned cars, highlighting how Market, Media, Message and Measurement can help lead to dealer success.

Then on Thursday morning Zac Keeney represented TargetClick and talked about how dealers can use their manufacturers’ big money to drive local search and benefit them directly.

That pretty much wrapped up our experience at DD14, and we were off to the airport to make our way back to Iowa. Please be done snowing!

For a copy of Zac’s or Rob’s presentation, please leave a comment below.

Rich snippets are the extra pieces of information that appear under a particular search result.  They’re the reviews, pictures of the author, star ratings or products that make the result stand out amongst the others.  Rich snippets aren’t the ‘if you don’t have this, then you suck at life’ kind of things, but they are eye-catching and seem more trustworthy, and that means your page will get clicked on more.  I’ll put this in perspective with a food example because I like food.  Which burger looks more awesome and satisfying?

If you chose the plain hamburger (CLEARLY the burger with onion rings is more wonderful), then that’s probably why we aren’t friends.  Anyway, all of the extra goodness on the better looking burger sums up rich snippets.

While a rich snippet by itself won’t increase your page rank, it makes your content in a search result more clickable, resulting in higher click-through rates.  It’s through this higher CTR that your content becomes more shareable (because more people are actually seeing it), which will help improve your rankings.  Here are some real examples and types of rich snippets along with what people would probably say when they see them.

Check out the following examples:

Recipe Snippets

How to add recipe snippets

Review Ratings Snippets (Individual and Aggregate Reviews)

How to add review ratings snippets

Video Snippets

How to add video snippets

Organization Snippets

How to add organization snippets

Music Snippets

How to add music snippets

People Snippets

How to add people snippets

Event Snippets

How to add event snippets

Product Snippets

How to add product snippets

I’m not getting into implementation details, so follow the links under each type of snippet to learn how.

I’m hungry now, so I’m probably going to go eat a cheeseburger with onion rings on it.

]]> http://targetclickmarketing.com/2013/05/rich-snippets/feed/ 0 http://targetclickmarketing.com/2013/05/master-your-negative-keyword-list/ http://targetclickmarketing.com/2013/05/master-your-negative-keyword-list/#comments Thu, 02 May 2013 08:00:00 +0000 doug http://targetclickmarketing.com/?p=1406 I was sitting there trying to juggle work and the live streaming coverage of The Masters online, as I do every year on Thursday and Friday of the Masters. Suddenly, I thought to myself, “I wonder how many searches for “the masters” are done this time of year.  I went to Google Trends to find out.  Nothing that I saw surprised me but what I did see made me start to think about one of the most important things to consider when managing a paid search campaign – Negative Keywords.

I glanced at the “Related Terms” and noticed the keyword “Masters Degree”.

I thought I would check out the “Hot Searches” section to see what was getting a lot of searches today.  Apparently, I’m not the only person interested in The Masters:

I thought I would check out the “Hot Searches” section to see what was getting a lot of searches today.  Apparently, I’m not the only person interested in The Masters:

This brings up an important point that as search marketers, we need to make sure we stay on top of trending searches to make sure we are not spending money on searches that are not relevant to what we are trying to advertise.  One of the biggest reasons that money is wasted in paid search campaigns is because of a lack of negative keywords.

Along with keeping up with search trends and seeing whether or not there is a connection with your campaigns, another great way to build your negative keyword list is to view “All Search Terms” within your Google Adwords account.  This is the way to do this:

1. Select the Keywords tab
2. Select the Keyword details dropdown
3. Choose All

This allows you to learn more about how customers are finding your ad. Here , you’ll see the actual search query that triggered your ad and led to a click. You are shown the query along with whether or not the query has been added as a keyword in one of your campaigns. This report is great for finding keywords to add as negatives, but also finding new opportunities for keywords to add.

Another way to find additional negative keywords or keywords to add to your campaigns is through the Advertising portion of Google Analytics under Matched Search Queries.

For those who may not know, the personal websites of adolescents were all the rage at the dawn of the new millennium. These sites served no particular purpose. They were merely a static destination to give “shout outs” to your BFFs, condensed versions of inside jokes with said BFFs and long lists of your favorite things ever. Essentially, it was the incredibly primitive precursor to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

One day, I was surfing the web at the snail’s pace that was customary at the time. I happened to stumble across some other websites outside of my network that featured the most striking graphics I had ever seen. Immediately, I thought to myself, I must have these sparkly butterflies on my website!

I soon discovered other pages that taught me how to obtain the HTML codes and add them to my own site. In no time at all, I could build basic layouts, update the page background and even make certain areas of text scroll across the page like a freakin’ marquee!

Looking back on it, that’s pretty impressive. If I knew a fourth grader who could string together code, even for an amateur Angelfire page, I’d be impressed. Unfortunately, none of my teachers found this to be a worthy enough talent to nurture.

My elementary school had a single outdated Macintosh computer lab that was typically reserved for fifth grade keyboarding classes. This meant most of our assignments were still handwritten or typed up on the innovative device that preceded tablets: the almighty AlphaSmart. Technologically capable or digitally inclined kids just weren’t recognized for their abilities in those days.

Sadly, we haven’t really come that far since the Angelfire renaissance. Even in modern marketing, most people don’t understand what enormous skill levels it requires to pull off a successful internet marketing campaign. Just because you have personal Facebook and Twitter accounts doesn’t necessarily mean that you can use these platforms effectively from a business standpoint. So what if you’re pretty good at stringing sentences together? It takes a lot more than that to create blog content that will both engage users and surface in search results.

In order to get an actual return on your online presence, you need a highly skilled digital team behind you. A professional digital team consists of people who are passionate, knowledgeable and experienced in what they do. Perhaps they all haven’t been writing code since elementary school, but they do possess the aptitude to achieve results.

We’re passed the days of static Angelfire pages and overly aggressive pop-up ads. The internet is a living, breathing and ever-evolving life force. Not only that, it is also an essential medium in modern ad campaigns. So don’t discount what a digital marketing team can do for you, and more importantly, don’t underestimate the talent it takes to achieve that success.

The end of the month has arrived, and you find yourself wondering how your SEM Campaign has performed over the past 30 days.  You frantically scroll through the mess of emails that have taken residence within your prime inbox Real Estate; towards the bottom, you find a message boasting the subject line: “SEM Report – March.”  Lucky you!  You quickly glance at the email’s text – blah, blah, blah…”things haven’t gone as well as we expected this month, but we’ll turn it around next time,” blah, blah, blah – nothing stands between you and the attached PDF file that contains your beloved Campaign data.  Rapt with apprehension, you open the file as a thin line of sweat begins to form along your brow.  You “ooh” and “aah” at all of the fancy tables and colorful graphs; not to mention the myriad of figures and percentages sprawled across the page.  As you scan the report, you begin to feel eerily perplexed by a few specific terms: Impressions, Clicks, Click Thru Rate, Cost Per Click, Conversions and Conversion Rate.  Then the horror strikes – you realize that you have no idea what those expressions mean, why you should care about them and more importantly, why your agency rep has failed to properly explain them for you!  What blasphemy!

If you raised your hand after reading the tragic narrative above, fear not, for I have taken the liberty of providing you with a quick guide to some common metrics used in SEM, particularly for reporting purposes.  You could call it an “Idiot’s Guide to SEM,” but I think I will stick with “SEM Metrics 101.”  After all, I’m in the business of Paid Search Marketing, not paid search and destroy your self-esteem.  Either way, take a moment to digest the list below – I hope that it allows you to better evaluate the success of your SEM initiative.

1. Impressions:  Impressions denote the number of times your Ads have appeared within Search Results Pages.  Your Campaign’s monthly Impressions will rise and fall depending on your Paid Search Marketing goals.  If brand awareness is your primary objective, then an increase in Impressions should make you smile (think, the more eyes on your Ads, the better).  In contrast, if you’re seeking relevant web traffic and qualified sales/leads, slight dips in your reported Impressions may occur due to attempts to weed out any irrelevant Ad Clicks.  When it comes to SEM, Impressions are absolutely free (notwithstanding some forms of Display Advertising).
2. Clicks:  A Click is counted each time someone decides to exercise their finger via their mouse when he/she physically clicks on one of your Ads.  When this occurs, your Campaign accrues a small fee depending on the quality of your Ad and its corresponding landing page, as well as the Keyword bid associated with that Ad (not to mention a few other factors).  All things created equal, an uptick in Clicks indicates that more and more searchers find your Ads appealing; consumers feel compelled to visit your website in search of a specific product/offer.  However, a barrage of Clicks may not always generate a proportionate and/or profitable improvement in site engagement and leads/sales.  In that case, you may be wise to ask your agency rep about his/her team’s effort to attain more qualified traffic via your SEM Campaign.
3. Click Thru Rate:  Click Thru Rate is the percentage of clicks your Ads have received out of your Campaign’s total Impressions (or Clicks/Impressions).  Click Thru Rate measures the relevancy of your Ads to searchers within your targeted geographic area; whether your Ads resonate with your audience, and are captivating enough to drive traffic to your site.  A monthly rise in your Campaign’s Click Thru Rate showcases the effectiveness of your Ads, especially when that growth stems from a disproportionately larger increase in Clicks than Impressions.  If you notice month-over-month drops in Click Thru Rate, get your agency on the horn right away.
4. Cost Per Click:  Cost Per Click represents the small fee you pay for each click on one of your Ads.  In general, your Campaign’s Cost Per Click is determined by two primary factors: (1) The quality of your Keywords/Ads and their corresponding Landing Pages; (2) The maximum price you are willing to pay for each Ad Click, as established by a specific Keyword bid.  At the aggregate, the Cost Per Click metric provides you with a means to gauge the financial success of your SEM effort and if the web traffic and ensuing leads/sales generated through Paid Search are worth their cost.  Ideally, your Campaign’s Cost Per Click should gradually fall each month.
5. Conversions:  A Conversion occurs when a person clicks on one of your Ads and then completes some sort of desired action.  For an e-commerce business, that action will most likely take the form of an online purchase; for most other websites, a Conversion is tracked via a lead form completion and/or a phone call.  Assuming that your monthly SEM expenditure does not consume an increasingly overwhelming chunk of your marketing budget, the more Conversions generated by your Paid Search Campaign, the better.
6. Conversion Rate:  Conversion Rate is the percentage of Ad clicks that have resulted in Conversions (leads, sales, and/or phone calls).  To calculate this value, simply divide your Campaign’s total Conversions by its total Clicks (Conversions/Clicks).  Conversion Rate not only measures the effectiveness of your SEM initiative, but it also allows you to analyze the ability of your website to stimulate consumer action.  If your Campaign’s Conversion Rate rises each month without an accompanying dip in Clicks and web traffic, then the person responsible for your Ad Spend is doing something right.  If not, start dialing that phone – he or she has some explaining to do.

If you haven’t noticed, each of the above metrics, while certainly valuable in their own right, carry much more meaning when analyzed together.  To illustrate this concept, let me quickly hash out a scenario that characterizes what I would consider a “great month” for an SEM Campaign.  When looking at your report, you see that your Campaign has received more Impressions than before, but you also notice that the Clicks generated via those Impressions have increased by an even larger factor, which means your Paid Search Click Thru Rate has enjoyed an uptick as well.  As you dive deeper into the data, you also take note that the aforementioned proliferation of Ad Clicks has spawned a disproportionate jump in Conversions, thus resulting in a Conversion Rate spike.  Finally, as your gravitate to the Cost portion of your report, you find that such performance came at a lower Cost Per Click than in months prior, thereby signaling a greater return on your SEM investment!  If your current Paid Search agency consistently provides you with this type of success each month, then read no more; if not, give us a call ASAP – we’ll show you how you too can attain such killer SEM results.

Fresh content = happy search engines.

Because it is [hopefully!] updated at least weekly, a blog is the perfect way to show search engines your site is active and engaging.  Every post creates a new URL for engines to crawl, and the more new URLs there are, the more often your site is going to get crawled.

Not only does it make search engines happy, people like to read blogs! According to this infographic and article from Jeff Bullas, in 2012, there were on average over 25 billion blog pages viewed a month.  People enjoy getting to know people and businesses on a personal level, so take advantage.

Because blog posts are fairly specific, there also lies a great opportunity to target long tailed keywords. SEOmoz tackles why long tailed keywords are important, but I’ll summarize: they make up about 70% of all searches! Another reason is that these searches are often performed by people who are ready to make a purchase. Woohoo!

Likeable content is linkable content.

Linkable content also makes search engines happy.  When Penguin ravaged, annihilated and slaughtered (too much visual?) websites for their crappy links, SEO changed.  You can’t rely on submitting your post about the variety of uses for Post-Its on beachbabes.com anymore.  Now, we have to work for links *gasp*.  This is where blogs become extremely useful in the realm of SEO.  External links are the hardest metric to manipulate, making it one of the best ways for search engines to determine the reputation and popularity of a site. See the importance? The more popular the site, the higher it is going to rank.  On top of the link itself, the anchor text of said link provides relevancy clues to search engines.  Because these are written by humans, engines see this as reflective of the content being it is being linked to.

Specific content is sharable content.

This doesn’t need much explaining, just think about it. Which are you personally more likely to share on Facebook or Twitter: the homepage of a website or something of value for friends and followers to actually read? Exactly. An increase in social sharing will lead to even more legit and natural links for you website.

Not everyone needs a blog, but it is something to consider if you think your business is right for one.  Remember though—a blog is ONLY beneficial if you are committed to it.  If you don’t consistently write new content, it is worthless.  Good luck!

This post is going to show you how to use Google Analytics (GA) and Product listing ads to optimize your website.

First things first, jump into your GA account.  Next follow this path:

Traffic Sources > Sources > All Traffic

This will show you the Source/Medium overview of your traffic.  From there, you want to click into ‘google / cpc’

From there, drill down on the ‘secondary dimension’  drop down to this path:

Secondary dimension > Traffic Sources > Landing Page

Now the optimization begins!

I am guessing that you already have a ton of ideas on how to begin optimizing your site based off seeing this info in your analytics account, and that is awesome.  Get after it!

BUT in case you want to see a couple ways we optimize based off PLA data you can check out these upcoming posts:

• “High Paid Visits to High Organic Visits”
• Don’t Waste Money on Easy PLA Fixes
• What’s Converting?