Search Engine Marketing Blog Posts

Getting to the top of the SERPs ain’t easy. With over 200 factors in the Google ranking algorithm, it’s hard to stay on top of what factors actually influence rankings. I want to give you a leg up heading into the new decade, so let’s take a look at some factors that may end up influencing rankings in the future. Keep Reading ›

Part of the reason Google has been able to remain on top of the search world for most of the decade is their relentless dedication to improving the quality of their search results. In the past, Google has kept quiet about updates, leaving most of the SEO/SEM folks to only guess that some system wide change had been made. Often, we search nerds are given confirmation of an algorithm change eventually, as was the case with some of the previous updates, but now for the first time, Google is opening the doors early to their next algorithm shift, called “Caffeine”.

Read on for a link to the sandbox version, and some early thoughts on how it might affect your rankings. Keep Reading ›

Do you A/B test ad copy in your pay per click ads? Well that’s great news! You’ve separated yourself from the lazy advertisers out there. But what about your meta descriptions and page titles? Sure, it’s a little more advanced, and possibly more time consuming, but how else will you entice searchers to skip over those Wikipedia and and NYT.com search results sitting above you on the SERPS? Read on for some tips on optimizing.
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In determining the effectiveness of a particular AdWords campaign for an eCommerce store we often turn to the all important cost per conversion metric. At the highest level, you can compare the amount spent per sale in a given time period to your costs and/or profit margins, and determine a return on your ad spend. However, without some tinkering, most of the reports generated from AdWords will only count one conversion per click by default. But what if one of those clicks leads to multiple sales? I’ll show you how to have AdWords give you credit for multiple conversions, and determine a truer cost per conversion. Keep Reading ›

Slowly but surely, eCommerce businesses are ramping up their social media efforts in attempt to bring in more traffic. Short URLs are a fixture of the social media world, where users of services like Twitter are forced to make each character count. Thankfully, there’s a new tool by the folks at Raven SEO Tools called kl.am, which is a URL shortener much like TinyURL with one big difference: Campaign tagging built in. Read on for how and why you should be using kl.am.
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A few years ago tons of companies scrambled to update their web presences to embrace what was being called Web 2.0. The movement is the reason there’s an official Marmite Facebook page, a Nordstrom YouTube channel, and a BuildABear Twitter account. Each of those companies have an official home page as well, to serve as a sort of home base, you know, in case you want investor information from Marmite. Well Skittles has taken Web 2.0 to a whole new level with the newest iteration of their website. So far that its hard to still call it Web 2.0. Read on for more. Keep Reading ›

For the search engine marketer, one strategy that often comes into question is the buying and selling of links. As amassing more backlinks plays a huge part in a website’s search rankings, the process of link building has become a considerable part of the search engine marketer’s repertoire. Google has long stated that buying and selling links are against their regulations, and websites that are discovered doing so risk being banned. But what happens when the blogosphere discovers that Google itself is buying links?
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Serious AdWords users have all likely had a few head scratching moments when delving into their account’s performance.  Or maybe it’s a complex keyword match question.  Either way, you could spend some time on the phone with someone at Google or search the internet for an answer.  Now, you can use Twitter and get an answer straight from the horse’s mouth.  Read on for how.

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Search Marketing Expo and Marin Software have put together a serious quiz to test your SEM capacity.  Score high enough and you could win yourself two free tickets to SMX West in February. Take the quiz at biggestsearchgeek.com and see how you fare.

PPC advertising during these “tough times” is an interesting beast. On one hand, eCommerce store owners may be underwhelmed by their sales figures and conversion rates compared to last year. On the other, with each user searching more and broadband adoption continuing throughout the world, raw search traffic has nowhere to go but up.

More searches + Less Likely Buyers + Higher Competition = More Wasted Ad Spend. Not good. Read on to find out what you should be doing to make sure your ad spend ROI isn’t headed the same way as the economy. Keep Reading ›