This Post was published back in December. It’s been updated and republished.
Before go ahead with this 3 parts series I’d like to play Morpheus (Matrix) and ask if you’d like to take the blue pill or the red pill.
“You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes…. Remember, all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more”
Most people ask me how I’ve done to rank well for my main keywords as p.g. SEM Strategy, SEO Strategy, SEM Australia, SEM Expert Australia and Marketing Australia.
There’s no magic trick, it’s all about building up relationships (Thanks James for teaching it) and relevant content.
It’s true that along the way you will find some small shortcuts but nothing tricky, unless you want to get caught in a long run.
SEM and SEO is all about strategy and implementation.
Finding the right strategy for your goal, and being organized on implementation.
One of the best use of tactics is the art of understand Search Syntax.
If you understand it, if you know how and what to ask Google, Yahoo, Live, etc, your SEO and SEM efforts will be amazingly pulled up, giving you a massive competitive advantage.
On this 3 Parts guide I’ll explain how to dominate Search Engines, and to make a little bit fun at the end of the posts I’ll give you some Google Hacks (just for fun).
First, just to make sure you really understand what is Syntax let me explain.
When you type in a query, you can add words known as Syntax, also called operators;
These words tell Google/Yahoo/AOL/Live something specific, something different about the search you want to conduct.
Operators are great for honing results, easy as pie, and are the primary uncharted territory of the Google Underusers Territory.
To kick thing off let’s start with
Searching URL’S
The term “inurl” is an operator you can add on your search if you want to look for matches just on the URL’s
This operator searches solely URLs for your query words. No body text. No titles. Just URLs.
To use any Syntax, simply type the operator and a colon BEFORE each of your terms, and do NOT put spaces before or after the colon. For example, a search using the operator inurl should look like this:
inurl:sem
Or
inurl:”sem Australia”
Or
inurl:sem inurl:australia
Note , it never contains any spaces.
If your query is e.g., inurl:”Seo Australia” , Google automatically searches for variations like Seo.Australia ; and Seo-Australia - If you use space before or after the colon Google can’t read your query.
Why Do I want this search?
It is suitable for:
- domain’s name buying strategy.
- locate your competition for given tag.
- Tag/Keywords optimization based on keywords url based competition.
Now the fun…..
Copy and paste this query on Google search
“robots.txt” “disallow:” filetype:txt
It gives all pages that webmasters asked Google to not index, including Microsoft, BBC and The White House. Mind your click on the results
Google Audio Ads is another option for you online marketing tactic.
Using the same online interface as your Google AdWords account, you can advertise on the radio across US, but just if you have an north american account.
anyways, there’s a Google oficial video showing the mecanichs of the Audio ads.
Are Yahoo’s parts greater than its sum? That’s the question at the heart of the company’s future. And shareholders and advertisers appear at odds over the answer.
The latest in the Microhoogle saga is that every media company is hatching plans with everyone else to get a piece of the action. But however this free-for-all ends up, the one consensus is that Yahoo is unlikely to emerge looking like, well, Yahoo. Fueling the drama around the on-again, off-again deal is the fact that Yahoo’s stock has fallen dangerously low — almost to the sub-$20 levels that preceded Microsoft’s takeover bid back in February — and shareholders want action.
That kind of downward pressure, along with pressure applied by Carl Icahn, who is lobbying shareholders to elect his slate to Yahoo’s board of directors at the company’s Aug. 1 annual meeting, is emboldening Microsoft to again try to snatch up what it really wants: Yahoo’s search business.
And if Steve Ballmer & Co. can walk off with that, he will emerge from what has been an ugly situation for Microsoft, thanks to its botched acquisition attempt and ambiguity around its digital strategy, smelling like roses. For Microsoft, nabbing just search would dramatically decrease the integration challenges sure to plague a full takeover, and it would give an immediate boost to a company that has said it wants 30% search share.
In the latest incarnation of a potential deal, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft is approaching potential partners about taking the display side of the company. Those reports said such a deal was unlikely.
Assume everything
When it comes to display advertising, assume everyone is talking to everyone, including Yahoo, Microsoft, Time Warner, News Corp., and even players such as Comcast and Verizon, who want to be seen as more than dumb pipes, said one party familiar with talks in the market. (Yahoo’s Asia assets could also be spun off.)
Meanwhile, Yahoo has been busy making presentations to investors, insisting the combination is what makes it special. In a recent presentation to shareholders, it called Microsoft’s “hybrid” deal “a bad choice for stockholders” and said: “Not owning search assets (including algorithmic search) would jeopardize the Yahoo user experience and make it difficult for Yahoo to maintain search and display volume.”
“Display is built on concepts we learned from search,” said Yahoo President Sue Decker, when asked by Ad Age in June whether she would do a deal to give up search. “Algorithmic search is valuable.”
By algorithmic search, she means the unpaid side of search — matching organic search results with user queries. For Yahoo, search is a data play. It believes search and display influence one another and has worked to integrate the sales force for the two channels. It also believes search can help influence the content that appears on a web page, making it more relevant. The deal Yahoo recently inked with Google involves paid search, not algorithmic search, and outsources responsibility for matching some paid search ads to user queries.
Multiple options
Advertisers seem to agree. “What is important is there’s a viable No. 2 competitor in the search market and at least two platforms where you can buy search and display,” said Bryan Wiener, CEO of 360i.
Jim Price, VP-media innovation at Empower MediaMarketing, said, “Without search, Yahoo becomes another display-advertising company in a world where portals are consistently losing traffic to smaller, more niche sites and ad networks.” Because it’s unlikely Yahoo will ever catch Google in search, he said, its display-plus-search strength is its key differentiator for advertisers.
Additionally, an analyst report from Stanford Group Co. suggested breaking up the company wouldn’t yield all that much gain for shareholders. It examined the value created by a potential breakup and found that the sum of Yahoo’s parts added up to $20 to $24 a share — not much more than where Yahoo is trading.
Test and improve is part of any internet marketing strategy.
Landing page probably is, from all the possible tests, the one that have higher impact, if you’re hoping to increase your online marketing results optimizing your landing pages will give the biggest bang for your buck.
A landing page is the page visitors arrive at after clicking on your promotional material as CPC, Email, CPA.
Your landing page has to convince the visitor to stay and (depending on your goal):
* Fill out forms
* Provide personal details
* Buy something
* Read a lot of information
Basically your landing page is your last chance to pitch your user/consumer, any flaw in site functionality and usability can cause you to lose the conversion.
But how to improve my landing pages? What should you test for landing pages?
#1. Headline copy
Once you have picked the perfect wording for your campaigns, *don’t* get creative with it. Keep the words in your campaigns and landing page.
#2. Kill all diversions and distractions
Pare your landing page to as few visually distracting items as possible so each clickthrough will focus on the path you want them to take. This may mean eliminating extra columns, sacrificing spare navigational bars/buttons and/or cutting unrelated graphics. The fewer distractions, the more chance clickthroughs will spend more time on the page.
If you have a hotlink on that page or an ad or anything that’s not what they clicked through to see, then it should be there on purpose. And if it’s there on purpose you should be measuring its value.
# 3 Start from the basic
- Stick your logo in the upper left corner.
- Pick a font and colors that match your site.
- Pop in your copyright and contacts in fine print near the bottom of the page.
- Include hotlinks to key elements such as Privacy Policy and Customer Service.
- Use the rest of the page for your content and hotlinks.
# 4 Do NOT test more than 2 variables
If you are testing design, just change an element from the design, do not change headlines or call to actions.
This will give you a real number of what have caused impact.
# 5 Keep testing, registering results and improving
Yes, Online Marketing costs are increasing (talking CPC).
You can stop and whinge all you want or you can move and learn.
Knowledge trumps rising costs in search. Online Marketers who are devoted to understanding their analytics and have the discipline to keep learning will continue to see positive returns from their search investment, rising more and more their ROI
Find other avenues to delivery more reliable, contextual, and relevant value to your users
If you are involved with Digital Marketing online in Australia you should Check the Affiliate Marketing forum, good tips and discussions for Australian online community.
Digital Marketing industry it’s been all talks about the recent Yahoo+Google deal.
I’ve been asked for different people how I see the influence of this deal on the online marketing environment,
My answer is simple - I hated it.
I don’t really care about Microsoft being or not the Evil Empire (as it’s called in Sillicon Valey). What I care is about Google dominating all aspects about Search Marketing.
Yahoo was the only viable option to Adwords (Google) arbitrary game (read “adwords slap”).
You might say, Yahoo is still serving ads from Overture. Bullshit.
TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington writes ;
“The deal allows Yahoo to put Google ads along side their own, presumably to maximize revenue to Yahoo. Google’s good at the top search terms (probably 80% or so of revenue potential), but Yahoo thinks they do fine in the long tail. The problem, of course, is that they’ll show Google ads for all the good stuff - and advertisers will go to Google to bid for those ads. More advertisers will leave the platform, further degrading Yahoo’s core search economics”.
I had a talk to an Australian Online Marketing Expert (he asked me to not be quoted) on Friday 13/06 and he had an incredible overview about the deal.
He gave me his opinion and how foolish Mr. Jerry was being and how emotional attached he’s with the company.
On the weekend The New York Times published an article about the deal, an article that goes exactly as my friend’s opinion.
“Jerry, you’re a billionaire because people all over the world bought your stock, and trusted you to do right by them. That’s the compact you make when you take a company public: you get to be really rich, but in return, you have an obligation to do everything you can to ensure that shareholders get a healthy return on their investment. It doesn’t matter that you would like Yahoo to remain independent, or that you can’t stand Microsoft. Your feelings aren’t supposed to get in the way of your fiduciary duty.”
Lists work because people want to know what other people are doing, reading or buying.
Online lists are loved even more than printed lists.
Here it comes the Top 50 Australian Marketing Blogs compiled by Julian Cole. He pretty much categorized the websites based on PR, Technorati and Alexa, He also has included a subjective score — the Pioneer score which measures the “blog’s ability to have pioneering thoughts about marketing”.
I like his methodology, but more than this I like his excellent initiative, bringing Australian community together. Well done Chris.
Some websites on the list were a great found for me, but also I’ve missed some other influential websites as:
One of the greatest features of Digital Marketing is real time data analysis and modeling.
Using one of the numerous available software’s, Marketing professionals can/should develop customer profiles, determine customer desires and behaviours and merchandise price profitability, identify and build segmented database and conduct other in-depth analyzes.
Tracking and monitoring web site traffic using website analytics is essential for online strategies.
Internet Marketing its not just about reacting but acting with users or customers who come to your web site; understanding who they are, where they are coming from, and what interaction they had. Analytics can compile this information into comprehensive web statistics
Everything seems great unless online marketing professionals start using it!
Stan Rapp used to say that a good product is that easily available when customers don’t even know they need it. The secret is understanding.
It’s alarming that about 82% of the online advertisers DON’T measure online actions in any way!
Spend millions of dollars of your budget and not having a clue of what is happening?
Web Analytics data its proven useful for driving decision-making, but still isn’t being used properly, around 60% of web analytics users say that they use around 30% of total potential of data.
Why?
I’d risk to say that it’s not been sold properly internally.
It lacks real understanding of how to sell within a company.
If you are an Internet professional trying to implement online strategies based on behaviour and understanding of your subscribers/clients you need to first learn how to sell it internally.
Let’s define some points first:
1) WHY do you need to sell internally?
2) WHO do you need to sell to?
3) WHAT you’ll be up against?
4) DO you have different arguments for different departments?
Understanding your internal clients and different arguments with them is crucial.
Don’t’ talk to the Decision Maker the same way you talk/explain to the End Users
When you’re selling to Peers you need:
- Build interest and consensus within your organization
- Sell to the end users
- Focus on features, usability, rewards, etc
When you’re selling to the decision-makers
- Write a killer and short business case
- Keep your focus on ROI, costs and benefits in short and long run.
Thinking about the bottom up and top down approach will help you to manage and to implement your web analytics strategy successfully.
