Posted by Tom_C

Campaign Management

All those articles on how to improve your campaign, tips, tricks and campaign advice.

Best of class: starting a PPC campaign from scratch by Rimm Kaufman

The rest:

• Google lady with 51 Adwords tips
• Digerati marketing with 3 tips to improve CTR
• Redfly marketing helps take the guesswork out of PPC campaign set up
• Redfly marketing gives 10 tips to increase your quality score
• PPC Hero on following Yahoo’s PPC advice
• Sitepronews on how to turn around an unprofitable PPC campaign
• SEOmoz chips in with 17 common PPC mistakes
• Netbusiness blog looks at 8 adwords mistakes
• SEOmoz with a whiteboard friday on PPC management
• PPC Hero with 6 settings to double check before setting a new account live
• Sitepoint with some of the worst adwords mistakes
• Searchengineguide with 5 common PPC mistakes
• Me! Talking about PPC! ON VIDEO! no way.

Tools

Here are a few handy PPC tools to streamline your processes.

Best of class: Search Light Digital's PAM-VAR Tool. It's neat and handy and let's you efficiently run your tests.

The rest:

• Google’s ad preview tool. Allows you to check your ads are running and how they look
• Google’s traffic estimator. Does what it says on the tin
• Self hosted PPC tracking software. Not used it myself but recommended.
• Vertster have a neat little statistical significance test

Landing Page Advice

Of course PPC management is only one part of the process. You need to make sure that you’re sending the traffic to a page which is working hard for you. How do you go about testing that? What should you improve on your landing page? All below my avid reader!

Best of class: Copyblogger does a comprehensive roundup of their own stuff on landing pages. Essential reading.

The rest:

• SEOmoz talks landing pages
• ROI Revolution share 3 landing page tips
• SEL shares some practical landing page tricks
• SEO Design Solutions writes on landing pages which appeal to motivated searchers (like PPC traffic)
• Anywired discusses 13 sure signs that your landing page is a turn off
• Postclickmarketing looks at how you scale your landing pages
• SEM Geek looks at optimising paid search and landing pages for TV, radio and print advertising. Compelling reading.
• 9 myths of landing page quality score
  

Headline Tips From The Dali Lama

See what I did there? Headlines are important see. They need to grab your attention. Never more so than in PPC.

Best of class: Google Lady shares some really in depth things to try with headlines for PPC along with detailed examples

The rest:

• Lyndon from Cornwallseo shares some headline writing tips. More for linkbait than PPC but good reading.
• Copy Blogger looks at how to write compelling headlines
• Copy Blogger again.. More good stuff
• Freelanceswitch on how to write headlines that kill
• Google conversion university tips on headlines. Basic but it’s good to go over this stuff

Maths

When you’re running PPC campaigns maths comes in handy. There’s actually surprisingly little written about this, I was expecting to find more. Please chip in with your own links in the comments. No best of class since there’s only 2 links!

• Distilled: PPC lessons from Kenny Rogers (advanced maths)
• Searchlaboratory (who work just across the road from where I used to live!) share some PPC stats secrets

Analytics

• Use Google Analytics to get proper ad scheduling data

Other

Here are all the other articles I didn’t think really fit into any other categories. Some general stuff, stats, rapping etc. All worth checking out.

• Searchenginewatch discuss playing dirty with PPC
• Google’s own tutorial. Dull in places but worth checking on the basics
• Bigmouthmedia on affiliate PPC spending by region (of the UK). Interesting
• A PPC rap. No, really! If you haven’t seen this then check it out!
• Ewhisper with how to lower your minimum bid (aka quality score)
• PPCblog write on understanding when to bid on your own brand
• 10 travel PPC tips
• 13 myths of PPC
• The darker side of affiliate PPC
• Are you running ads on google partner network? If so, read this!
• Combining search and display advertising for greater gain
• More than you could ever want to know about quality score

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Posted by randfish

A very short tip, but one that has been proving incredibly valuable to all of our clients of late.

When you think about attracting links organically, the process goes something like this:

1. What content can I create that will naturally attract links?
2. What format should I put it in for maximum share-ability?
3. How can I promote it to reach the largest possible relevant audience?

For the very first part of that equation, a lot of link builders and viral marketers think about things like high quality resources or the "ultimate" guide to a particular topic group. However, in my recent experience, I've seen that link creation on the part of bloggers, journalists, site owners, and social media participants is less about linking to the "best" content, and more about linking to something because they get something in return. For example:

• Twitter users, forum posters and bloggers all like to link to things that will make their visitors/audience appreciate them and come back to them
• Social media users want to vote on things that excite them, inspire them or amuse them (the last one appears particularly strong). The ease of consumption plays a big role here, too - the faster something is to digest and enjoy, the more Stumble thumbs, Diggs and votes it earns. More complex pieces don't earn that ability with the same ease.
• Site owners, particular those in the SMB or personal website arena are incented to link to stories and content that backs up their point of view or re-inforces a long-held or long-argued position.
• People everywhere want to link to things that show off how cool/impressive/important/interesting they are

Use this psychology of online participation to your advantage. If you're a:

• Site catering to real estate professionals, rank the top real estate bloggers or top real estate agents
• Site that serves news stories, talk about the early adopters and discoverers of content and allow them to participate and get quoted - they'll reward you in the future with loyalty and links
• Site involved in e-commerce, reward your customers who run websites with discounts, thank-you's, and recognition
• Site that provides B2B services, incent your partners with badges or testimonials that make them look good

You can apply this logic to almost any business or content focus and benefit from the natural links that are created. You just have to remember the web isn't "fair" and people don't link to something because it's the "best." They link because it benefits them to do so - play to linkers' egos and their selfishness and you'll often have more success than if you appeal to their sense of altruism and sharing ethos. Remember that, more and more, site owners, bloggers and social media participants think of themselves as competitors for online attention - while they will still share "great content," they also sometimes get that nagging feeling that the greater it is, the worse it makes them feel about what they've produced.

This may seem like a cynical viewpoint to take regarding online psychology, but it makes sense and it brings links, so I'd be remiss not to share. Get to work incentivizing your audience and you'll see the links come pouring in.

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Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire

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Posted by randfish

Linkscape has been out for just over 2 months, and recently had its first index update. Although it's still in beta (and probably will be for another update or two), I've been using it enough for our client projects that I think it's worthwhile (and high time) to share my personal applications for the tool and its data.

#1 - Comparative Reporting for Management

CEOs, CMOs and Director-level types tend to have a thirst for KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Yahoo! Site Explorer has historically been the pre-eminent source for link numbers, but it's always had problems, not least of which is the massive fluctuations (hit F5 in your browser a few times and the numbers that come back are seemingly random). Linkscape's index, although it's less frequently updated, gives a reliable snapshot from representative sample of the web's links. The only time that data changes is when the index updates.

Below is an example of what I'd prepare if we were working with Zappos.com and wanted to show my board of directors our stats against those of top competitors:

I've got some fast, easy takeaways from this data. First off, we're winning not only the link numbers battle, but the importance battle as well. A raw count of external links actually shows Shoebuy.com ahead of Zappos, but when we look at the domain diversity ('# of External Links' divided by '# of Linking Domains ), we can clearly see that Zappos is in the lead. Secondly, I know exactly how far a relatively new player like Endless.com has come - they've been here almost two years and clearly haven't threatened even some of the smaller competitors in the field. Interestingly, DmR (Domain mozRank) matches up pretty nicely with rankings, too - Google results. I'd be more inclined to look at things like page-level mozRank, # of links to the URL and anchor text, but it's still fun to see such high correlation.

Compare this to a classic report using search engine data:

The homepage PR has always been a crummy metric (and one that considers only that single page, rather than the entire domain), so having DmR is a big step up. Likewise, it's hard to convince SEO outsiders (or insiders for that matter) that Yahoo!'s link reporting data is valid when it's frequently extremely different from the numbers inside Google's Webmaster Tools (which can't be used for competitive comparisons since you can't log in to other sites' consoles) and even different from different types of Yahoo! requests. Honestly, Yahoo! isn't even consistently inconsistent, so despite fresher data and a larger index, the numerical discrepancies make it nearly impossible to use for serious analysis.

#2 - Analysis of the SERPs (aka figuring out why a page ranks where it does in relation to others)

I'm always curious to understand how a site/page has achieved the rankings it has, and Linkscape is marvelous at taking a lot of the unknowns out of the equation. We can all look at keyword usage and targeting, but getting into the link analysis on competitive SERPs has always been incredibly difficult. Now (especially with the new Linkscape update showing more links per report - 3,000 for the URL at once), I feel really confident about the assessments I make as to why a site is succeeding or failing.

For example, if I wanted to analyze the top 5 ranking URLs for the phrase "Free Ringtones," I can do so with a lot of strong data points:

Naturally, I'd want to add in keyword usage and optimization information, but it's normally sorely lacking that big anchor text component. With Linkscape, I can finally fill in that missing blank and have a real idea about the quantity/percent of links that contain optimized anchor text:

Based on an analysis like this, I can put together an extremely good estimation of what will be required to achieve competitive rankings for the keyword phrase. If you've got high value keywords you're pursuing and need to know what it will take to get there, this system is a remarkable roadmap.

#3 - Uncovering Competitor's Link Acquisition Tactics

It can be frustrating to see a competitor shoot ahead in the rankings and have no idea how they've achieved their success. Linkscape makes it easy for us to reverse the tactics that have produced valuable links and good anchor text by letting us quickly sort through the links pointing to a given site/page.

For example, if I was curious about how Evosales.com (a site selling scooters and mopeds) had earned their links, I could peek inside an advanced Linkscape report and see 852 links to the domain from 277 domains. Linkscape will show only the top 10 from any given domain, so even though it has 1,315 links, it's limiting some of those that come from domains with tons and tons of links.

Looking at the data, I can see a lot of links that appear to come from partnerships they've got with other scooter dealers on the web like mopeds.com, neoscooters.com and iscooterparts.com. There's some nice natural links coming from Scooter forums like ScooterBBS.com, Digg.com, Kaboodle.com and AdLandPro.com. They also have a small directory link building campaign earning some juice from sites like About-Cars.com, rkom.com, motorcycleonlinestore.com and more. All in all, for a small number of links, the profile is pretty balanced and relatively organic.

For many cases, knowledge like this will help establish an understanding inside your organization of what the competition is up to. If there's lots of spammy, low quality links, you can potentially report these to the engines. If the competition has great viral content, you can attempt to mimic or outdo their efforts. And if they've simply got a small, organic footprint, you can be more aggressive with directories, content strategies and direct link requests or purchases to overcome their lead. It's always an excellent idea to be prepared and the ability to sort, filter out nofollows and internal links and see where good anchor text and link juice flows from makes this process much more accessible than with other, less granular or expansive tools like Yahoo! Site Explorer or Exalead.

#4 - Identifying the Most Important / Most Linked-to Pages on a Site

In the near future, we'll be building out a specific tool to help with this process, but in the meantime, the data is still relatively accessible through Advanced Link Intelligence reports. Just choose "links to domain," then select "same PLD" (Pay Level Domain: Entire website including all subdomains) and "show only." This will give you an ordered list of the top ten highest mozRank (or highest mozRank-passing) pages on your site. For example, I've done just this with SEOmoz's homepage below:

What's amazing about this kind of information is that it's so easily actionable. Looking at this, it's obvious we need to start using the link juice on the SEOmoz PRO Landing Page better (or potentially redirecting non-cookie accepting users back to the homepage, since you'll need to log in to complete the next step anyway). Likewise, I can see that the old page strength tool is redirecting link juice to the Trifecta report, which probably needs some attention as well (since that page isn't trying to rank for anything competitive, either).

Running this on your own sites and pages can reveal internal architecture and link structuring mistakes that could spell huge opportunity for redirecting link juice to places where it's needed. And similarly, you can use the comparison report feature to custom-check any number of combination of pages on a site:

Comparing the URL mozRank with the link counts reveals great information - it can help to illustrate the relative success of a piece of viral content (like our Web 2.0 Awards against our Search Engine Ranking Factors) from both a number of links and importance of links perspective. I can also use it to identify strong vs. weak pages and make decisions about whether to redirect, where to point links to and from and what difficulty level of keywords to target.

#5 - Finding Sources of Split Link Juice

Many sites have multiple versions of the same page for one reason or another. Oftentimes, it's tough to convince developers or management that it's a priority that needs addressing, but SEOs know from experience that it can have a big impact, particularly when the engines themselves are doing a poor job of canonicalizing for you (or haven't passed along the link juice when they scrub the duplicates). Linkscape is great at illustrating the potential problems, using the comparison report.

For example, on NYTimes.com, there are four different URLs that send you to the technology home page. In fact, you can see them all in Google's index:

Wow. That's pretty telling - and even if Google is doing an OK job of getting those pages canonicalized, it's a terror to imagine trying to do analytics work on that page. You've got four different URLs you'd need to track (in Omniture or whatever analytics NYTimes is running), making for a huge headache. Let's see if Linkscape can help convince us that it's time for a move:

Basic Comparison Report

You can see we're looking at 4 unique URLs, all with the same content, and each earning hundreds or thousands of individual links. Put the link juice together, and the potential is remarkable. Apply this same logic to pages on your own sites (or those of your clients) for easy wins on low-hanging fruit.

#6 - Identifying Possible Spam

There are two big reasons an SEO wants to be able to see spam. First, so they can potentially identify and report their competitors for violating the search engines' guidelines and second, to help keep their own noses clean as they conduct link building and acquisition campaigns. My favorite way to do this is to use the difference in mozRank & mozTrust to help quickly spot possibly problematic URLs and domains. If you've got lots of link juice but very little trust, it usually means you've gotten links from places that aren't particularly reputable. Since mozTrust is still a rough metric, it's best found on sites/pages where the disparity is quite large.

Let's say, for example, I'd like to rank well for "discount mortgage brokers" - which probably wouldn't be as appealing today as it was 6 months ago, but probably still gets some pretty decent search traffic. Here's some folks ranking in the top few results:

In classic SEO, I'd go look at the links pointing to these pages (and sites) and try to find some potential sources where I can also get links - directories, lists, resource hubs, etc. But, if I'm smart, I'll only spend time chasing the ones that are really worthwhile, and that's where mozRank can have a big impact. For example, if I go to the links pointing to www.wes-state.com, I'll see some good links, but I might also find some like these:

Obviously, the Yahoo! directory link is a pretty good one - high mozRank and mozTrust on both the domain and the page level. But the others, especially on a URL mozTrust level (and judging by the feel - title, URL, content, etc) might not be prime candidates. While I love Yahoo! Site Explorer, there's no fast and easy way to weed out the good from the bad as you're sorting through it, so these metrics can be a huge time saver, as well as helping to avoid money spent on links that may not provide much value (either now, or in the future).

#7 - Judging the Quality of a Potential Link

In a related way, Linkscape has also been good to help me judge the potential value of a link. Since most of our clients are larger enterprises and organizations, I'm not usually doing this on a link-by-link level. Instead, I'm applying the logic of metrics like inbound link quality and diversity (along with the specific mozRank and mozTrust scores) on a domain-wide basis.

For example, if we were working with Apple (we're not, currently), they might want to examine the SEO value of buying up some smaller MP3 stores or fan websites and hosting those themselves, embedding their links or entirely redirecting the sites. Without numerical evaluation metrics, it would be much harder to visualize the different values of particular sites. This applies equally well to individual pages and smaller sites. Thinking about paying for a link, buying a site, putting up some advertising or engaging in a joint venture? Trustworthy metrics are an invaluable asset. 

#8 - Finding Specific Link Acquisition Targets

There are a few particular queries inside a linkscape report that I've found incredibly valuable for individual link sourcing:

• Search for "resources" in the URL
• Search for "links" in the URL
• Search for "directory" in the URL or title
• Search for "list" in the URL or title

Results may vary, but just a few quick searches can source hundreds of new link opportunities. For example, check out a search for "directory" in the title of pages linking to www.directlendingsolutions.com:

Or see the links that point to popular online comic book store, tfaw.com that have "links" in the URL:

If you're hankering for an easier way to find link acquisition targets, this is a pretty spiffy system.

#9 - Judging the Relative Success of Viral Content

What worked better? My mortgage calculator, or my blog post on how zombie overlords are eating the brains of Wall St.'s elite? From a traffic perspective, it's not hard to see using your site's analytics, but on the SEO side, it can be very tough to judge which content is earning more links (and higher quality links). Luckily, the comparison report simplifies the process.

Since we're on the topic of the undead, let's look at how some specific pieces of linkbait have fared in the world of vampires, zombies and their ilk:

Looking at the numbers, we can see that the Zombie Survival Wiki (ZombieSurvivalWiki.com) and the Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency (FVZA.org) lead the way, although since the Mingle2.com Zombie Harmony site once existed at its own domain - www.zombieharmony.com - we should really count the 1,380 links from 412 domains that site earned as well, putting it clearly in second place.

This isn't just for fun - you can use analyses like this to see what's been successful for your competitors as well as your own site and leverage that knowledge to make informed decisions about how to best target and construct your next viral campaign.

#10 - Finding Specific Kinds of Links, such as .edu and .gov

Just as you can use Linkscape's search function to identify directories and resource lists, you can also leverage it to locate high quality .gov and .edu websites links.

If you're trying to identify links from particular domains, whether those are educational or government or from specific country-code TLDs, Linkscape's search function via the URL is a great resource.

5 General Notes on the Links in Linkscape

1. Linkscape's current index is between 1/3-1/2 the major indices at Yahoo! & Google, and it's biased towards domain diversity over depth, so while you'll see tons of different domains and their homepages and important inner pages, you often won't find deep pages on those sites
2. Linkscape data is between 1-2 months old at any given time, so the links aren't always completely fresh
3. Linkscape now shows, by default, the top 3,000 links to a page and domain for every advanced report. The anchor text metrics and the juice passed numbers are based on these 3,000 shown.
4. For that 3,000 number, we've elected to show up to 10 links from each domain, again favoring displaying domain diversity. We had lots of folks request this feature before the update last week, but it does mean that many links from a single domain aren't shown.
5. The metrics we're happiest with are URL mozRank, URL mozTrust and Domain mozRank. Domain Juice, mozRank passed, and Domain mozTrust are still a little behind, so if you're wondering what metrics to use, go with the former. Link counts and domain counts are also very good.

Whew! That's a lot of material, but I think (nearly) all of it is incredibly valuable for many SEO campaigns. If there's any applications you've employed (or would like to learn more about), please do share!

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Posted by great scott!

A larger, printable version is also available here. Matt McGee also put together a great SEO Pyramid about a year ago with more detail and a broader look at things - The SEO Success Pyramid.

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Posted by randfish

I've been watching a lot more of the Dr. House show, and becoming a bit obsessed with some SEO mysteries of my own. Since our last outing into diagnosis went so well, I thought we'd try again. I haven't got either completely solved, but I feel pretty good about some hypotheses. Let's see how you do:

Mystery #1: Google SERPs for Web Crawler

Ranking in position #8 is the real estate site "www.mckinley.com" with neither the word "web" nor "crawler" on the page or in the URL. Why is it there?

Mystery #2: Google SERPs for 4:20

Don't ask me why I was searching for it, but that 7th result is peculiar. What causes it to rank at Google, but not Live or Yahoo?

Looking forward to your analyses in the comments, and yes, if SEO were a class, this would be extra credit. :-)

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Posted by randfish

This morning at SEOmoz, we're having a dev priorities meeting to decide which items in our queue of tools, upgrades and improvements will take priority for the next 45-60 days. For fun, I thought I'd open it up to our community and ask you - what would you most want to see from us in Q1 of 2009:

Meeting starts at 10am Pacific (70 minutes from now) :-)

p.s. I know another Linkscape update isn't listed on there, but it is already in the works and should refresh much of the most important content and grow the index size again (no definitive deadline yet, though).

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Posted by Duncan Morris

Over the last few months I've found myself doing slightly less SEO, and in its place I've been thinking about how we can improve the SEO services we offer our clients.

SEOs (I've found!) tend to be quite a creative bunch, both in the type of work that gets done but also in the way that the work gets done. One of the joys of being in SEO is that the tasks that need to be done and the best way of doing these tasks is permanently evolving. The creative urges mean that often when asked to do two similar tasks a week apart, the tasks are done in a completely different way. From a job satisfaction and creativity point of view, this is fantastic; starting from scratch each time on a task means the creative juices can really flow. From a management and consistency point of view, re-inventing the wheel each time is a nightmare!

In business strategy discussions we often talk about wearing multiple hats to help differentiate between the various roles we have to play. In any given day I can metaphorically wear a number of different hats, ranging from my shareholder hat, to my management hat, to my SEO or developer's hat.

With my management hat on (I picture a bowler hat) I've been trying to get a happy medium between allowing the creative juices to flow freely and being able to guarantee quality and consistency to our clients. It's early days for our more formal processes, and I dare say I'm pushing a bit far towards the consistency side of things, but I thought I'd share a few of my thoughts.

Create a Products and Services list

Our first step towards the management holy grail of consistent quality is to create a list of products and services that we offer. SEO is constantly changing (and salesmen have a habit of selling anything!) so this list is constantly evolving, but having the list makes our life so much easier in so many different areas.

Sales Process

In a small and growing company it is very tempting to do anything for anybody that asks for it. We all want to be able to deliver exactly what the clients want, but without careful specification and handover between the sales team and the operations team this can lead to poorly defined tasks.

We have asked (management speak for "told") the sales team (in our case, Will!) that they are only allowed to sell things that are on our list. These are the things that we are confident we can really excel at. Every task we sell is taken from something from that list. This means that right from the outset everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet (I'm really getting into this management speak).

It's worth mentioning that this hasn't led to us selling things that people don't really want or need. Almost every business and every website is different, so the last thing I'm suggesting is that you just apply a generic product or service to all of your clients' websites. Having said that, when it boils down to it, there are a fairly small subset of tasks that occur on almost every project. Keyword research, anyone? What about a technical site review? To reduce any lingering doubts, we also allow the sales team to list any specific areas of focus or differences from our standard product.

Creating processes

We have spent time working out what we mean and how we go about delivering each and every task. This is the balancing act I was talking about earlier. If this process is too regimented then all the creativity we enjoy as SEOs is lost and you are just following a recipe. If this process doesn't exist at all then the management structure is lost.

By creating the processes, we have something we can review and adapt over time. When our creativity finds a better way of doing something, we can add it into the process and from that point onwards it improves the product we offer to all our clients.

To ensure that this list is used and is kept up to date we constantly review it. We have a weekly meeting of the SEO team to discuss the various projects we are working on. Each week we review one of the processes and get feedback on ways we can improve it. There are always new SEO tools that can make a process better or faster. In theory, the days of people shouting across the office, "Does anyone remember the name of that tool that lets me ..." should be gone, since whenever we find a new tool is gets added to the process.

By constantly reviewing the processes and keeping everyone up to date with the latest tools, tactics and techniques, we are always incrementally improving the service that we offer our clients.

Reviewing completed projects

Someone called Guy Bellamy once said:

Hindsight is an exact science.

Source

As part of our project management process we run regular meetings to discuss all the projects that we have completed. We only run these meetings when we have enough completed projects so that there is enough to talk about. The first time we ran such a meeting I was shocked as to how much we learnt. Looking back at a project a couple of months after the work has been completed gives you the ability to see what worked and what didn't. SEO is often about trying something, measuring its effect, refining the process and trying something else. Spending the time to look back over a number of projects allows you to spot trends that you might otherwise miss.

Do projects where you start link building before you fix any technical issues work better than those where the order is reversed? Knowing the answer to these sorts of questions feeds back in to the process documents and will make you better as a consequence.

If you only take one thing from this post, I urge you to take a couple of hours out of your day and sit down with your SEO team. Look over all the projects that you have completed in the last few months and dissect and discuss. I guarantee you will learn something interesting. What you do with your new knowledge is obviously entirely up to you.

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Posted by rebecca

• The Lives of Others
• Away From Her
• Atonement
• Michael Clayton
• There Will Be Blood
• No Country for Old Men

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