links for 2009-07-31
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Google's presentation on the new Bid Simulator program that lets you anticipate the number of clicks by changes in your max CPC.
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The new UI is now live for everyone. If you travel a lot and connect via a lot of methods, or just have a slow connection – I'd recommend using the AdWords Editor a lot. There have been many days the new UI is just unusable because of how long it takes to load.
Learn from Nuance (the makers of Dragon Naturally Speaking) in Making Customer’s Not Contact Your Business to Learn More
How many barriers do you have to providing pre-sales customer support? Even one can stop a sale from happening. Read just one consumer’s thoughts (mine) about trying to buy a product and what the potential barriers are. Have you evaluated your sales process through your customer’s eyes?
I’ve always wanted to test out Dragon Naturally Speaking (a speech to text program), and it’s on sale right now. However, their downloads are by Digital River, possibly one of the worst customer support offices ever. My last time I dealt with Digital River, my experience went like this (and all consumers have bad experiences in their past with some provider):
- Bought the software where you have 30 days to install
- The install failed due to an error on the manufacturer’s side
- Repeated attempts to contact manufacturer went unanswered for weeks
- Repeated attempts to contact digital river are still unanswered
- This resulted in my first, and only, chargeback
- Avoiding any software downloads that involves digital river
However, all Dragon Naturally Speaking downloads appear to be by Digital River, so I wanted to contact Nuance real quick before buying the product just to see if there were alternatives to the download process.
It turns out you have to make an account to contact Nuance by email. And what’s worse, you actually leave Nuance’s site when you hit the contact customer support button (while this screenshot is for technical support, you have to create an account on nuance’s site for standard customer support. And since they are on different sites, you have no idea if you need to create multiple accounts to contact different departments).
Suddenly the trust factor drops significantly, and questions go through the buyers mind:
- A different site?
- So does someone else do your technical support?
- Can I understand the person doing support?
As customer support satisfaction is dropping in many places due to the outsourcing involved, this could be a big issue. And secondly, who wants to create an account just to email technical or pre-sales support?
Post sale support is almost always worse than pre-sale support. Post sales means the company already has money from you, and usually does not support items nearly as well as getting you to buy the product in the first place. So, if your pre-sale support requires this many hoops; what are you imagining your post-sales experience will be?
Suffice it to say, while I was ready to buy the product this morning and test it out. However, after finding:
- Potential barriers to download
- Barriers to customer support
- Barriers to technical support
- Poor experience with their technical backend download system
- A website that auto plays videos with sound (really? That turns off everyone in an office setting)
I’ll wait another day to try out Dragon, or take a good look at some of their competitor’s reviews.
While I’ve rarely ever used customer support for post-sale software; and probably will never need it – it’s the fact the barriers seem so high if I ever needed to use it.
That’s what customers think. If I need this, will you be there?
While most may never need support; if a customer thinks you won’t be available when they need you – then it’s time for your potential customers to move on to your competitors.
links for 2009-07-30
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The article is long; but if you want to see the microsoft / yahoo deal in a simple Q&A style writing; this is a fantastic place to get into some of the deal's nuances.
What you need to know about search engine policies and trademarks
I did a webinar last week that covered:
- What is a trademark (as far as search is concerned)
- How did we get here (trademark lawsuit Google vs Geico)
- Microsoft adCenter policies & what to do
- Yahoo Search Marketing policies & what to do
- Trademarks on Google prior to May of this year
- May’s country expansion of trademarked keywords
- July’s change to using trademarks in ad copy even if you are not the trademark holder
- Google’s policies & what to do
- What will be an ‘informational site’?
- Reasons to use trademarks in ad copy
- General Q&A
The webinar is now on-demand at Search Marketing Now. You do need to register; but after you register you’ll be able to view the entire webinar. It’s about 30 minutes in length.
Some of the Q&A has been transcribed on Search Marketing Now’s website.
I also wrote an article a couple months ago that is still relevant: How will Google’s recent trademark changes affect you?
links for 2009-07-29
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Quick, interesting read on psychological distance and thought processes.
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Meeting people vs Maker people.
1 hour intervals vs 1/2 day intervals
Which are you? -
Danny goes into good thoughts on his personal blog about the APs 'fair use' comments.
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I have to admit; I'm a bit happy about this ruling; if for nothing else the courts actually realized there are alternative spellings to domains and it seems that the courts are starting to understand the the internet. I'm still all for TM protection under the correct circumstances; however, I'm more for courts starting to think about online and offline together when awarding TMs. Hopefully, the patent office will follow their example.
Microsoft adCenter & Google AdWords Resources to make your life easier when Yahoo Search Marketing is replaced by adCenter
With the recent Yahoo and Microsoft agreement, Microsoft will take over both the search results and PPC ad serving from Yahoo. This gives Microsoft adCenter enough search share, you need to open an adCenter account and move your Google info there.
adCenter is a fantastic platform, with many features similar to Google. The biggest difference between Google and adCenter is that at Google, all the targeting options live at the campaign level. With adCenter, the targeting options live at the ad group and campaign level.
For instance, on Google you need to set a budget per campaign. However, you should separate search and content reach into two different campaigns; and thus you need to split your budget. On adCenter, you can have one budget for the campaign and then ad group is search and ad group 2 is content within the same campaign.
While most of the adCenter features are also in Google. The notable exception is adCenter’s param system (resource links below). With adCenter you can have multiple variables that show up in ad text for each keyword. It’s amazing how custom you can build your ads per individual keyword. Google only has basic keyword insertion, and the only thing you really get to choose is the casing.
Google does have many content targeting options that aren’t available on adCenter. With video ads, image ads, fantastic placement options, Google’s content network is fantastic. adCenter just doesn’t have the reach or the options with the content network.
Below is a chart that has some base comparisons between Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter. Below the chart is a list of adCenter resources to help you learn their system quickly.
| Google AdWords | adCenter | |
| Match Types | broad, phrase, exact | broad, phrase, exact, content |
| Negative keywords | campaign, ad group | campaign, ad group |
| Keyword Bids | Keyword, placement, ad group | keyword, ad group |
| Content bids | ad group, placement | keyword, ad group |
| Budget | Campaign | Campaign |
| Budget types | daily | monthly or daily |
| Budget spend | accelerated or standard within day | same options, different names but can choose daily or monthly |
| Content enabled | Entire campaign | Campaign or ad group |
| Excluded sites | campaign or ad group (new UI) | campaign or ad group |
| Location targeting | campaign | campaign or ad group |
| Targeting by time of day | campaign | campaign or ad group |
| Changing bids by time of day | campaign | campaign or ad group |
| Changing bids by day of the week | campaign | campaign or ad group |
| Conversion tracking | yes, account | yes, account |
| Ad types | text, image, video, mobile | text, mobile |
| Ad serving | rotate or optimize (campaign) | ads are automatically optimized to show the highest CTR the most |
Here are a collection of articles that should help ease the transition to get started with adCenter:
Importing AdWords campaigns into adCenter
adCenter Match Types
Dynamic Keyword Insertion
- Dynamic Keyword Insertion on adCenter
- Using Params (adCenter allows some interesting customization of the ad text by keyword). To see these, in your ad group, select a keyword (or multiples) then hit the ‘add or edit keyword button’. Here you can edit the params by keyword. If you are doing a lot of param editing; then use the excel add-in.
adCenter excel-ad in. Similar to the AdWords Editor
adCenter adExcellence program. Similar to the Google Advertising Professionals program. Lots of good videos.
adding parameters to links. Similar to AdWords value track-like options.
adCenter community portal. This is where adCenter shines. Microsoft has an amazing set of individuals who have done a lot of hard work in engaging the search community. I can’t say enough good things about Carolyn Miller, Mel Carson, Jeanie Dumont, and many more over at Microsoft. These people are not the ‘old conceited’ Microsoft. They are the humble, smart, knowledge, eager-to-help, Microsoft could win if they adopted their attitude, Microsoft. Even if you didn’t use adCenter, you should follow this community as there’s just good info there regarding search and advertising in general.
Meta Tags Are Not Dead
Once again the discussion has come up that meta tags are dead and most seo is boondoggle.
Do not believe the hype!
Meta tags live.
Title tags are incredibly important.
While the effectiveness of metas might be a decent discussion for those who follow SEO closely and engage in SEO regularly, it is very misleading for those new to the arena.
I recently talked to a company who has a PR6 website (and I’m using Page Rank just to show it’s an authority domain, not to use PR for ranking purposes) who had the exact same title, meta description, and meta keywords on every page of their site. Naturally, they didn’t rank for anything outside of their company name.
They thought it didn’t matter that all the metas & title tags were the same, because the SEO community has been saying metas are dead for a while now.
I talked to another company who was about to remove all their metas & title tags because metas no longer matter.
What do you think would have happened to their rankings?
Unique title tags are one of the most important things you can have on your site.
Period. End of story. Let me repeat, if you have the same title tag on all your pages, it’s the same as naming every single chapter, headline, and page the exact same in a book and expecting a reader to be able to find information. In this case, the reader is a search engine spider – but the analogy stands.
What about meta description tags?
The meta description tag when talking ranking factors is of small importance. However, that does not mean it’s useless. If a snippet is not shown on a search page, the meta description is. Think of your meta description as the body of your ad copy. The body is what someone reads and decides to click on your natural rankings to arrive at your website.
Therefore, a good meta description tag can bring in more traffic.
If you subscribe to the theory that the sites that get the clicks from a search result can move up in the rankings (i.e. natural SERP CTR), then a good meta description can also raise your rankings because it gathers more clicks (not everyone agrees with this – and I’m not going to debate this one on either side at the moment).
Come on, the meta keyword tag – does that really matter?
On Google, not really. On Yahoo, its a small factor – but great for misspellings.
When you get into the other meta tags, such as author, they are useless.
Most CMS systems automatically create meta keyword tags; hence, it’s little work, little rewards and while you shouldn’t spend you time writing meta keywords tags. However, if the system generates an OK list (a few keywords, not thousands) then its not worth your time adding or removing this metatag from your system.
The SEO Discussion Should Be: What a good SEO company should do for you
Most of these discussions arise because SEO companies are still writing meta tags and submitting links to engines. Submitting links to search engines is a waste of time – completely agreed.
However – if all the pages of a site have the same title tag – then the SEO company should be rewriting title tags.
If all the description tags are the same – again – rewrite them.
Every time an article or SEO blog post comes out that says you don’t need meta tags – you are misleading those who are just getting started with SEO.
<updated>What I’ve found after talking with many companies about SEO is that they all think title tags and metas are the same. While the advanced SEO community is saying metas and not titles, most businesses lump metas and titles together, pretty much all the tags that end up in the <head> of a website.</updated>
While a large part of SEO is link building – having links does not mean much if you don’t have the on page factors correct.
Therefore, first fix your on page factors – then worry about link building.
Meta tags are an on page factor. They matter.
Not all meta tags are dead.
For those new to SEO:
Here’s some information to help you out:
Got the basics from those two pages? Now, here are some good resources to read:
links for 2009-07-27
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Think I'm kidding when I say some privacy polices say they'll sell your info anywhere? Read this article – enlightening about privacy policy.
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Local Business Ads are Going Away!
Once Google has settled things down and most accounts have the location extensions information enabled, I'll do a full step-by-step post on how to deal with the new LBAs; and some tips for non-local businesses who might want to use location based ads (events, distribution channels, etc)
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Number of conversions necessary for conversion optimizer is now 15; previous minimum was 30.
Learn from Western Digital’s Press Release Mistakes
The tech blogs were buzzing today with Western Digital’s press release that they now have a 3.5 inch 1 terabyte drive that is now shipping.
Let’s examine some aspects of the press release, and where WD failed to incorporate best marketing search practices.
A search for either model number on WD’s website bring up no results:
Price and Availability WD Scorpio Blue 750 GB drives (model WD7500KEVT) are available now through select distributors and resellers; the 1 TB capacity (model WD10TEVT) is available now configured into My Passport Essential SE USB drives. [Note: excerpt from PR]
The URL in the press release does not work:
More information about WD Scorpio Blue mobile hard drives may be found on the company’s Web site at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=685
When copying and pasting the URL, you are redirected to a different page without any information on the hard drive:
Note: Several hours after the press release went out, this page now redirects to the proper page.
The press release lists the product where you can find the new drive, but the size isn’t listed on that page:
A search on Google bring up zero product results:
- Either product number
- Product name
- 1tb western digital 3.5 inch drive
- etc
If a product is too new to be listed number one organize, then buy some paid search ads so customer’s can find your product.
I’ve bought 3 500mb My Passport hard drives in the past year. I just gave away my last one for digital picture organization (these drives are small, and very easily portable) so I was going to buy myself another 1tb drive today. After looking at WD’s website, Amazon’s website, and authorized WD resellers – I couldn’t find a single 1tb My Passport hard drive anywhere.
While the press release might have looked nice and complete, the rest of WD’s website and resellers were not ready for these searches and volume yet. Make sure when you put out a press release that you links work, people can easily find your product, and your internal site search actually lists the products (especially part numbers) in your own internal search.
5 Ways To Track Phone Calls Generated From PPC Clicks
My latest Search Engine Column is out, titled: “5 Ways To Track Phone Calls Generated From PPC Clicks”.
Understanding how many phone calls are generated from your PPC accounts is essential to making good marketing decisions. There are 5 main ways (6 if you could dynamic number writing as a method, see the article comments) to track phone numbers:
- Unique phone numbers
- Phone extensions
- Code identifiers
- Search engine tracking script
- Confidence factors
The article looks at the pros and cons of each method, and adds some tips for buying call tracking numbers.
Enjoy. 5 Ways To Track Phone Calls Generated From PPC Clicks
Google AdWords
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