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July 27, 2005
PPC & Organic SEO
I hear from advertisers all the time on how important it is to do Pay-Per-Click and see first hand how organic SEO is still being ignored by some of them. Yes, PPC search traffic is very important for increasing the number of qualified visitors to a website and really is the closest thing to instant gratification when it comes to getting good traffic to a website in a very short timeframe. By all means, PPC campaigns are critical to maximizing overall market share and SHOULD be utilized indefinitely as long as the ROI is intact.
What about the organic SEO side of things? Doesn't it make sense to focus a good chunk of your budget on driving potentially even more qualified search traffic to a website in natural search? Seeing how organic search listings are clicked on 60-70% of the time with PPC listings being clicked on the other 30-40%, it only makes sense to go after the natural search traffic while leveraging PPC campaigns.
What Intrapromote has found is that the most successful search engine marketing campaigns are with clients that utilize both Natural and PPC strategies. By utilizing both PPC and organic SEO, companies are focused on capturing 100% of the their targeted traffic potential as opposed to only going after the 30-40% of clickthrough potential associated with PPC listings.
PPC is a great way of impacting bottom lines, but for some of the marketers out there, you’re still only about 30-40% of the way to maximizing your returns.
Posted by sean at 08:36 AM | Comments (2)
July 21, 2005
Google profits grow 4X
Google just announced their quarterly numbers. Profits increased 4X over same quarter last year. We'll hear lots of news stories about PPC, Adwords, and Adsense for the next week. More at Bloomberg News
Posted by brett at 05:35 PM | Comments (0)
Keyword Tools for PPC
Are there useful PPC tools? I have...
- Keyword Extractor (pulls KWs out of competitor websites)
- Keyword Tidy (deletes duplicates, etc.)
- Permgen (Permutation Generator)
I sometimes use KW Extractor. You give it a few KWs and it find 20, 50, or 100 websites at Google for those KWs and then visits each one and copies their meta-keyword list. The result is sorted by frequency. Depending on the type of client, this can be either useful or it can produce a long list with many useless keywords.
Posted by brett at 02:30 AM | Comments (0)
July 20, 2005
Link Request Rule #1 - Link Building is Not a Booty Call
We spend a good deal of time focusing on what’s wrong with link requests. Our intention is only slightly to nourish our better than thou air. Our goal is, more importantly, to better shape our own requests. So thanks to our readers and clients for forwarding such material, and also thanks to the sacrificial lamb who send their link exchange requests to Intrapromote.
Link Building is Not a Booty Call!
“I have found your website, **insert URL here** by searching Google for **insert search term here**.� Any time I see an “I was in the neighborhood so I thought I’d stop by� -type request I picture Larry Dallas working his magic at the Regal Beagle.
Jack Tripper: Larry, haven't you ever thought of telling a girl the truth?
Larry: Well, I figure, anyone who puts on eyeliner, fake eyelashes, and plastic nails isn't someone who wants to hear the truth.
Larry, listen to your buddy. Skip the BS. Just get to the request!
Posted by tom at 02:25 PM | Comments (0)
July 19, 2005
PPC Click Fraud to reach $1 billion annually
I just read an article this morning that stated PPC click fraud will reach $1 billion annually!!! I don't know about y'all but, this number is very bothersome.
I must admit that click fraud is and has been running rampant with no foreseeable end in sight. PPC search programs like Google & Yahoo! Search Marketing say they look into click fraud but for which companies exactly and to what extent??? Try, if they are doing any PPC fraud monitoring, it's for their BIG spender clients and not the small to medium sized firms which IMO need it the most due to smaller budgets and working capital.
I think it's also safe to say that the PPC search engines don't really want to address the PPC click fraud issue because that means they won't make as much money on clickthroughs. I, and many like me see this as a huge conflict of interest. I hope the PPC search engines address the click fraud issue at some point soon to provide solid returns for ALL clients and not just the BIG budget ones.
For now, keep your fingers crossed in hopes that your competitors and click-pounders alike are keeping their dirty little fingers off the mouse button hovering over your PPC listings.
A link to this article can be found here
Hey Google, hey Yahoo!...are you listening????
Posted by sean at 01:21 PM | Comments (0)
July 16, 2005
New bidding system at Google PPC
Big changes at Google Adwords: there will be a new bidding system. No more 5-cent minimum bid. The bid minimum will be unique to each advertiser, based on the Quality (overall effectiveness) of the Adgroup. This means an advertiser with a high CTR (for example, 5%) would have a 7 cent minimum, and an advertiser with a low CTR (say, 0.7%) would have $3.50 mimimum. This will reward the advertisers with well-managed accounts and force poorly-managed accts to either pay more or get out of the pool.
Posted by brett at 02:48 PM | Comments (0)
July 15, 2005
It's a Pod pod world
Podcasting seems to be the latest and greatest in the “virtual� world. I am enjoying it and thought I’d share a few of my favorites.
Enjoy! Brent
At each of the links below it will take you to the homepage for the podcast. From there you will need to subscribe.
Podfinder - Preview of different podcasts that are out there.
Fly With Me - (this site is experience technical difficulties so the link goes to episode 5) Very interesting interviews related to what goes on behind the scenes of commercial airline crews.
Coverville - A thrice weekly show that features all cover songs. Each show is themed.
Daily Source Code - Adam Curry’s (the most famous podcasting “evangelist�) thoughts on podcasting, various podcast promo’s, and some pod-safe music
ESPN Radio Podcast - a short sports show
Posted by brent at 02:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Someone isn't reading Google's webmaster guidelines!!
I just can't stand it when websites use spam tactics to artificially inflate rankings @ Google. I came across a site today that one of my prospects told me was a leading competitor in their vertical.
As I drilled down the home page of the competitor site, everything looked fine until I reached the bottom of the page. I noticed there was empty white space under the footer section. So, me being the curious individual that I am, I started under the footer section and did a good ol' left click drag down and to the right. Wouldn't you know it? A whole bunch of incredibly small font text/links popped up. The text was so small that I couldn't even read the words!!! When viewing the source code, I noticed that there were literally hundreds of hyperlinks to other pages within the site with keyword rich Alt text to inflate the keyword densities of the page. The link to this page can be found Here
Heres an excerpt from the Google Quality Guidelines page:
"Avoid hidden text or hidden links."
I wonder what Google would think of this page? Hmmm.........
Posted by sean at 11:36 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 13, 2005
PPC is what I see
hello, world
Posted by brett at 02:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack