There’s much more to think about when marketing for display ads. Things to consider such as what size to use, where to put the ads, who are you selling to, and much more.

These are some crucial bits of knowledge when it comes to display advertising and I’m here to give you the “in” on that knowledge.

Many kinds of display ads
First of all there are many kinds of display ads. There are text, image, video and mobile ads and thanks to Google Ads Display Network we have a great visual for what is generally covered.

The focus in this post is on image ads and there are a few things to consider before we jump into the “top 3 things to know”. Lets get a few basic standards out of the way.

The main purpose of a display ad (sometimes called a banner ad) is to ultimately get a consumer to buy a product or service. This is done initially from getting the users attention on the display ad to click through to the landing page or another specified location to allow for the desired end action. (Don’t worry we’ll cover landing pages in another post)

Also if you are one of those technical types then here are the google standards for display (image) ads.
Google Standards for Display Ads (Image)

Now onto the first of our much anticipated “things to know”

1) What size display ad should I choose?

A better question is what sizes are out there and more importantly what is the best size to use?

Here’s a handy chart for you to take a look at and see the variety of options out there for all of your exciting display ads.

And for those of you not as visual here’s a list of some of the most popular sizes :

Display Ad sizes [1]

Had a good look? Awesome.

The ones that I most frequently use are:
• Leaderboard
• Skyscraper
• Wide Skyscraper
• Medium Rectangle
• Large Rectangle

I’ve found the most effective sized display ads are:
• Medium Rectangle 300×250
• Leaderboard 728×90

These sizes seem to be the most effective for me and for many other sites as well as follows the example below from MarketingCharts.com

“Classic leaderboard (728×90) display ads are 7.2% more likely to be served in-view than medium rectangle (300×250) ads (74% vs. 69%), and 12.1% more likely to be delivered than wide skyscraper (160×600) ads (74% vs. 66%), details comScore [download page] in a March 2012 study of 12 national premium brands. Although the classic leaderboard delivered the best in-view rates, there was a large amount of variance across the sites measured, ranging from 7-93% using the size. comScore insight suggests that a possible cause of the variance among ad sizes is the typical placement of these ads on a webpage.”  – Marketing Charts

Keep in mind that the layout of the site that you will be placing the display ads on may not allow for these specific sizes.

Great now you know the most effective size to make your display ad but now where do you put it?

2) Where do I place display ads on a specific website?

As mentioned above not all sites support the sizes that you may want to use. So it is important to consider and know what websites you will be placing your display ads on.

This heat map on Google’s AdSense page shows the ideal locations of placing your display ads.

dark orange = strongest performance
light yellow = weakest performance

In general the middle of the website is the “sweet spot” but typically it could be tricky or expensive to place an ad right in the middle. Any ad placed near navigation (where a person naturally goes) or by any important information is a good performance area as well. Placing ads typically don’t do well below the fold, however the ads could do better if a user scrolls quickly down a page before the ads above the fold have time to load.

As a general common sense thought you should place your display ads on websites that support what you are trying to sell. So if you are selling new cars you would want to place those ads on car enthusiast sites, car help forums, parts stores, etc. instead of placing the ads on a jewelry site where they would more than likely be not clicked and a waste of money. This goes into the idea of whether or not to make the image blend into the design of the website or not.

3) Should I “blend” the display ad into the website?

Typically “blending” or “complementing” the display ad into the website you are placing it on is a better tactic than having it stand out and appear to be an ad. Consumers know what ads look like and take on a very unwanted trait called “Banner Blindness.”

Banner Blindness – A consumer’s conscious or subconscious ignoring of information presented in the form of a banner or display advertisement.

I’m sure you have gone through your email or even on any website and have personally experienced banner blindness. You look for what you’re interested in and ignore the ad  that claims you must try this free offer of such and such… You generally don’t care and half the time don’t even notice the ads are there.
This is why you should blend, complement or contrast your display ad into the design of the website. Below are a few descriptions of how to do that in different ways.

• Blend – to make the background colors of your ad the same as the page it will be on.
• Complement – like blending but using the colors in the display ad that are already on the existing page.
• Contrast – when there is a dark background, use lighter colors in the display ad that will engage the viewer.

The reader will feel like it is part of what they are “looking for” and become engaged in your display ad enough to click on it and perhaps even purchase.

Google AdSense: What ad styles are the most successful

**Tip: Try not to include a border around your display ad. The border makes it look like an advertisement sending off red flags to a consumer to not click on the ad.

Overall be smart about marketing display ads and be aware of what the consumer wants. Put yourself in the perspective of the consumer and ask yourself “Is this what I would find enticing if I were looking for this particular product or service?”
We’ll cover the “Top 3 elements of Designing a Display Ad” in a future blog post.

Check back regularly for updates and feel free to comment below!

Footnotes
[1] http://websitetips.com/articles/marketing/banneradsizes/#fn12

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The reason: Effective link building takes time and energy.

In fact, a link builder who is doing things right may spend weeks corresponding with a handful of webmasters trying to obtain links for their clients. That’s because a handful of links that are extremely relevant to their clients’ sites are empirically proven to be more effective than thousands of links from sites that have nothing to do with a client’s niche.

Bulk link builders take the easy way out. They spam blog comment forms, flood online message boards, buy links from brokers and anything else they have to do to meet their monthly quotas. What effect does this have in the long run? For a while, most SEOs believed that these links were simply discounted by the search engines. But a recent “study” (more like a revenge plot) by a group of SEOs revealed that the tactics used by some of these companies could actually hurt their clients. Hurt them very bad.

Scrapebox Blast – The New Dirty Word in Link Building

In mid-April, a member of the trafficplanet.com forum made a post about a campaign to drop two notoriously hated SEOs from the SERPs for some of their key phrases. The reasons, and responses from the targets, are entertaining in their own right. But you’ll have to read the thread to get that side of the story.

What caught my eye was the method the team used in their negative SEO campaign, and how quickly it worked. Using a “Scrapebox blast” to build 1 million RSS submissions, trackbacks, and automated blog comments linking back to their target sites.

In the end, the victims went from page one to page 100+ for what can be assumed were some of their most lucrative keywords.

Those who carried out this study/vindictive action wanted to show Google that, contrary to their claims, negative SEO is a possibility, even with the search engine’s sophisticated algorithm. But they also proved that bulk link building can be extremely dangerous.

Scrapebox, the program used in the attack and which I willfully chose not to link to, has the slogan “Harvest, Check, Ping, Post.”

• First red flag: Any SEO tactic containing the word “harvest” in its description should send shivers down your spine.

The program’s hastily designed squeeze page goes on to ask “Do you need More Money, More Time, More Links, More Data?” Why, yes, I would love all of those things. And how do you plan on providing them, good people of Scrapebox?

In short, Scrapebox “harvests” sites from the search results that present opportunities for link building. Tell Scrapebox that you want to rank for the term “scuba gear,” and it will find you thousands of sites with comment systems or forums that you can easily tack your message onto.

But make no mistake, you don’t even have to waste your time writing an individual message for each site. Scrapebox will automatically post to all of these sites for you. It will even spin your message and anchor text into thousands of grammatically incorrect variations that no human can understand!

It’s hard to believe, but some SEO and link building firms still use programs like Scrapebox to deliver on their promises of thousands of links per month. And while most of these links will simply be ignored by the search engine, the poster at trafficplanet.com has almost certainly proved that there is a tipping point for spammy links where Google says “enough!”

Of course, even the laziest SEO should have just enough smarts to know that a million Scrapebox blasts in such a short time frame would be a bad idea. Still with Google rolling out another round of major algorithm updates, is it really worth taking any risks when it comes to your site?

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Unfortunately, there are plenty of SEO agencies out there who, either willingly or unknowingly, simply aren’t pulling their weight for their clients. But you don’t need to learn SEO to spot a company that’s bluffing its way into your marketing budget. So to help you out, here are three signs that it’s time to give your SEO agency a fond farewell.

1. They Use Keyword Rankings as Their Primary Success Metric

At its core, the goal of SEO is to increase your website’s visibility in the search engines. So when the analyst you’re working with sends you a report showing that you’re shooting up the SERPs for a bunch of really relevant sounding keywords, you do a little happy dance and send them a blank check so they can keep doing whatever it is they did. But if all you’re getting as a regular report is an Excel doc telling you where you sit for a big list of search terms, you might not want to sign that check just yet.

I could spend a good couple of hours pointing out all of the holes in using keyword rank as your primary yardstick for success, but there is one major reason why this method is flawed: Search is becoming more and more personalized for each user in a number of ways.

Google and Bing are both using social media signals to serve up tailor made search results.

If you’re logged into Facebook and searching on Bing, you’ll notice that websites, news stories and other content that your friends have liked will float to the top for related searches.

Likewise, Google will serve up content that members of your Google+ circles have +1ed.

Search is also becoming hyper-localized, and there’s no better example than the recent “Venice” update to Google’s search algorithm. In the Big G’s own words:

“This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.”

Vague, huh? It turns out that Venice’s main purpose is to serve you local results for the broadest search queries.

Before this update, the first page for a search for the term “dentist” would provide users across the country with mostly the same results – Wikipedia pages about dentistry, the ADA website, etc.

Search – Before "Venice"

Now, depending on where you live, you might not see a single national or international website above the fold when you search for “dentist.” Venice has notably changed the search landscape of Google to the benefit of businesses with websites that give off strong geographic signals.

Search – After "Venice"

It’s possible, for the time being, to turn off search personalization. By doing so, you can get a look at the raw SERPs for any term – a leader board, of sorts, allowing you to see who’s done the best job optimizing by the classic SEO standards. But the personalization of search has no end in sight. If your site is the first result for a Facebook user in Seattle, someone conducting the same search in Chicago with no social media profiles may not see you until page two.

So, while it’s good to know where you stand in terms of unfiltered search results, it’s inaccurate to say that being in the first “pure” organic position will get your business in front of as many eyes as it would have a few years ago.

2. They Don’t Have a Google Analytics Certified Staff Member

So, if search rank is distorted by personalization, how can you measure the effectiveness of SEO efforts? By determining your businesses key metrics for success, and tracking the impact organic traffic has in helping you reach your goals.

• •Are you most concerned with revenue from visitors who reach your site via non-branded, organic search?

• • Do you want people to stay on an important landing page for the duration of a video about your company?

• • Or is every sign up for your newsletter invaluable to your business’s bottom line? 

Whatever action a user can take that you see as an indicator of success, chances are that it can be tracked in Google Analytics.

Of course determining the actual impact of SEO on these performance indicators is a whole different story. It’s sad to say, but many SEOs will simply look at the goals they’ve set up in analytics, tally up how many conversions came from organic visitors, and just assume that any positive trends for the month are the result of their work. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

I’m not suggesting that these SEOs are intentionally misleading their clients. Most are just naïve, and don’t know how to pull the real juicy, actionable info from the sometimes daunting Google Analytics interface. That’s exactly why every agency needs an analytics certified professional on staff.

Someone who has gone through the certification process knows how to draw deeper connections between seemingly unrelated data sets. They can build the custom segments and alerts to measure whether or not the work their team is doing has provided a return on your investment. They can sort through historical data and determine if your business truly saw a 50% increase in organic conversions last month, or if it was just normal seasonal behavior. And, hopefully, they will let you know when efforts need to be corrected, such as when a search high volume search term isn’t providing any benefit to your bottom line or when the wrong landing page has been optimized for a choice keyword.

3. They Promised You X Number of Links Per Month… Before You Even Spoke With Them

While points one and two are, more often than not, signs of inexperience or inability to keep up with the newest SEO trends, the upfront promise that an SEO vendor will make it rain links on your site is a red flag, indicative of nefarious black hatters.

I can’t tell you how many firms I’ve seen offering nonsense like a Standard, Premium, and Master of the Universe link building package. What I can tell you is that hiring a company with a website that promises you 200, 500 or 1,000 one way, followed links per month is akin to playing with fire near an open canister of gasoline. It’s a guaranteed way to (at best) burn through large amounts of cash or (at worst) get burned by the search engines.

Link building requires link worthy content – The sort of information that someone would want to link to if they simply stumbled across it on their own.

A good link builder takes your existing assets (or helps you build them if you lack content) and presents them to the owners of relevant, high quality sites whose visitors stand to benefit from a link to your offerings.

The search algorithms are advanced enough to determine when a website has a logical reason to link to you. So links from sites with a stake in your industry will be rewarded, while those links that don’t have a strong, logical connection will usually be ignored.

There’s a very noticeable disconnect between the basic principles of link building and the promises set forth by these insane, nonsensical link packages.

• • Ask yourself, how can anyone guarantee any number of links without knowing whether or not you have link worthy content? 

• • More importantly, how can anyone know that there are enough websites within your industry to sustainably build X number of links, month after month, without doing a great deal of research? 

I’ve seen how a lot of these companies operate, and it’s never pretty. Link farming, paid links, exploiting open source web applications, content spinning… They’ve all been used, and the sad thing is that, for a short time, these strategies actually work. This is primarily because the search engines seem to honor almost any link to some degree for a short period of time to prevent competitors from sabotaging each other through spammy links.

So it’s easy for a company to quickly build you a huge profile of crummy links that artificially inflate your rank in the search results. After a few months, the search engines discount the links, stripping all of the benefits your site had received from them. If these shady linking tactics continue for too long, there is also a risk that your site will be removed from the search indexes. Of course, by this point your SEO vendor has already shaken you down for a good chunk of change, so they’re ready to move on to the next wide eyed business owner.

These three tips are just a sampling of the signs one might see to give their SEO provider an early retirement. Have you ever sent an agency packing, and if so, what were the reasons? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to check back regularly for more tips to help you navigate through all things in online marketing.

As your business grows you are likely to be faced with the decision of whether to hire your team internally or to outsource the work. There always seems to come a point where you need your Web Developer more frequently and on a pretty regular basis.  There are a couple of things to keep in mind when making that call, one I’ve been through many times in many different situations.

What Is the Duration of the Project?

With any position you choose to outsource there is an amount of responsibility you have to your potential employees. You don’t want to mislead them on how much work is involved and leave them with less of an income, because remember they are running a business and have bills to pay too. If you leave them with less earning potential then they initially planned for you can sour the relationship very quickly.

If your project is a one-time thing, even if you think it will take as many as six months to complete, you typically are better working with an outsourced agent to complete the project. Take the time to properly plan out how long your project will take to complete, determine if it’s a one-time thing or a long-term project and let that guide you on whether you want to hire someone internally or outsource.

These aren’t the hard fast rules for outsourcing and you can always offer the job to someone locally as long as you make sure and let them know it will be short-term. You may be surprised how many people offer to take on your project.

“When it comes to website planning and development there is one thing I’ve learned over the years and that is that projects are continually in the process of change.”

There is always going to be something else you want tweaked and reworked so it’s important that once you find a developer you like, to do everything you can to make it a good relationship, and good projections on workload is one way to keep them around a very long time.

What Is Your Budget for Web Development?

Budget can be a very easy way to determine if you’re going to be able to afford a developer in-house or if you outsource. Here in Wisconsin, a decent entry-level Web Developer is going to cost you at least 40K a year, and the strong ones 50K plus.  A strong Web Developer would be someone that can both design as well as code your website.

If your budget doesn’t allow you to pay a Web Developer 3-4k a month then you should look into purely outsourcing the work. There’s nothing wrong with that, in fact when I was managing my largest team, an internal marketing department of over 20 people, I still chose to outsource a lot of the projects. I kept two strong developers on staff, as well as a few Graphic Designers, but I still used outside companies for the coding and development. If you don’t have the budget or workload for someone internally then the decision is easy.

Where Will Your Business Be In 6 Months?

The timeline of six months isn’t a hard-set deadline, but this amount of time is meant for you to start thinking about where you are now and where you want to be in the next six months.

  Do you see your operations growing?
  Do you foresee the need for a full-time Web Developer?
   Can you afford to pay an employee long-term?

These are all things to consider when choosing between hiring internally versus outsourcing your potential Web Developer.

The reality is, if your project is a one-time thing and relatively quick, you really don’t need to put yourself through intense research on whether to hire your staff internally or externally. It’s a simple matter of deciding what you want for that one project.

If you determine that this single project will be ongoing or if you have long-term projects, then you should consider the previously stated insight and experiences I have shared. I have only described a few of the many things worth considering, but some that will help guide you in making the right direction.

My Experience with Internal Web Developers 

Having an in-house Web Developer was one of the greatest luxuries I had and definitely enjoyed in my time as a Marketing Director.

“No outsourced agent, at least in my experience, could top sitting in a room and working through layouts together and getting the designs, plans and production exactly right.”

In most cases you are only going to get that kind of synergy from an internal Web Developer.

I should also mention, don’t assume it’s always automatically cheaper to outsource Developers. Finding a good Developer is hard to find and those that choose to outsource their time know their value and don’t usually come cheap. Plan your work for the foreseeable future, take your time and make the right decision when it comes to your web team.

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What are your experiences with outsourced Web Developers versus internal ones?  Is there anything else to consider when hiring Web Developers that I may have missed?

Certain Content Cannot be Replaced by Copywriters

One of the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to the content of their website is they choose to outsource too much of it.  If you just flat out can’t stand writing content, then it’s going to severely limit the type of websites you can run.  The problem with so many internet marketing advice websites and blogs out there, is that the advice they give is far too broad. I plan on sharing with you specifically what I know about outsourcing content to copywriters.

What I know when it comes to content is if you want to run an affiliate website, or sell products that are not your own, you can literally outsource everything. There are, however, going to be areas of the website where you want to use some really high quality writers, and other areas where you can use writers from a few steps down.  That said, in terms of websites that add real value, I still don’t see any place for copywriters that do not speak English as their first language, but you don’t have to use a clean-up hitter for every spot in your line up.

If you are selling knowledge, say for example you run an Internet Marketing Consulting blog like I do, or if you want to sell information based products, there aren’t going to be a lot of people out there that can lighten the load, simply because they can’t possibly know as much as you. Any writer, even the best, are going to struggle re-creating your voice and people reading your content will notice disconnects in your content.

Decide the Purpose of Your Content

Any brand new website is going to need loads of content and any existing website is still going to need regular content updates. Whether it’s adding a new section to your website or simply maintaining some sort of blog or forum on your PPC website to keep it new and fresh.  There are several areas of content you will need to consider, and each different type will require writers with different skills to complete your task. There are about three types of content copywriters that I’ll go over.

If you’re looking for sales copy for product pages on your website or for say a sales letter, you’re going to want to seek out a writer with expertise in writing this way. (Just so you know, these are the most expensive kind of copywriters for good reason.)

If you are looking for content for other sections of a website like – frequently asked questions, terms and conditions, or general content pages you need a writer with very good grammar, who has a history of delivering high quality content with a reasonable turn around and solid overall pricing.  These types of copywriters are generally the easiest to find as long as you are willing to pay $30-$50 per page, a price well worth it if you’re like me and struggle writing your own content.

A third type of content is something like auto-responders; these are a good mix of strong overall content with a touch of sales experience.  This type of content can be the most difficult to outsource, but again it’s a different type of content you’re looking for here.

The key take away is to break your content needs up into different skill sets so you can best match a writer to each type of content you need, it’s the best possible way to get quality content for the right price.

Decide the Volume of Content Needed

As you’ll read below, using several different writers is really the key to success for several reasons and volume of content is one of them.  The volume of your content will drive a lot of what your needs are and you’ll have to find several outlets to get your content from. This may be 4-5 single freelance writers, or a combination between formal and informal agreements. Most quality writers, who are writing decent content should be able to put together 3-4 pages of good content in a day, meaning standard website content.  It takes me almost a full day to do a single blog post like this, and it’s not even well written.

Someone who is a quality copywriter could write this post much quicker.  You have to remember though, an outside writer needs to be given enough time to do the research, since writing is only half of what they must do to complete the task at hand.  It’s very unlikely you’ll find a expert on your specific topic  just floating around out there.  If you need any more than say 10 articles in a week, you’re going to want to have at least 3-4 writers to work with, if you need 100′s of articles in a week, well that’s even more important to plan ahead for.

Planning is very important when it comes to outsourcing writers, just like most marketing endeavors; but it’s not something you can set and forget.  Figuring out what kind of volume you need so you can communicate clearly to your writing team what your expectations are is a very important step.

Take the Time to Coach Your Writing Team

Working with your writers is the MOST important thing you can do.  It is going to take 3-4 revisions at least before your writers are delivering something close to what you’re looking for.  Here is the thing, writers can write, the best ones can write very well, but the fact is they just don’t know exactly what you want the first time around. They don’t know your product, they don’t know the voice or tone you want, they can’t know the level of sarcasm you want in your writing, and so much more.  One of the biggest mistakes people make when hiring writers is seeing their first pass and assuming it’s the best they can do.

The fact of the matter is the best copywriters can easily change the tone and style of their writing, but simply cannot know what you want unless you tell them.  If you want to be happy with your content, and eventually want to be able to spend very little time on it, you need to spend time upfront working with your writers.  Sure, some of those you hire just won’t “get it”, that’s why you bring on as many as possible upfront and what ends up happening is you get 2-3 that become your “go to” writers.

“As a general rule, ALWAYS have a backup writer.”

The time you spend with your writers off the bat will have dividends 10 fold of what you put into it. You simply cannot just hire a writer and get what you want or need; this is what separates websites with good content, from those with great, high quality content.

Use Several Different Writers

I cannot stress this enough, it’s a short tip, but one that is key.  Never be satisfied with one or two options when it comes to hiring freelance copywriters.

Unless you are hiring in-house writers things are going to come up that are unplanned. Many freelance copywriters are mothers and fathers, just like us, and the last thing you want is to be waiting on receiving content in order to launch your website.  It’s the same risks you run into when outsourcing many other portions of your business, but nothing is more frustrating than having a nice, cleanly designed website sitting there; waiting for content.

“Another reason you want several writers is so you can have the advantage of having editors.“

I often used editing as a way to get my backup writer paid and making money as well as involved in the sites content.  Using your backup writers as editors is key should they ever need to step in and take over any content for your site, as they will already be familiar with the voice and tone you expect in your content.

Using more than one writer also allows you to vary the tone and style should you wish. Sometimes people want the whole site to be in the same tone and voice, but sometimes it warrants different ones, like on product pages versus say a blog.

Inspect What Your Expect

As with anything you outsource or even when you use your own personal staff to complete work, you must always inspect what you expect.  As with any outsourced labor there is always the temptation to let quality slip or use filler content to drive up prices, not to say all writers are like this, it’s just something you need to keep in mind.  Always maintain a high expectation of quality, make sure you give direct and clear feedback without sounding mean, and give constructive feedback.  Your outsourced copywriters want to make you happy, and you want them to be happy, so don’t forget to always check over the work. If you personally don’t have enough time, make sure someone does.

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What do you all think about these tips for hiring writers?  What do you always do that helps you succeed?  What websites do you use to locate writers? Keep the conversation going in the comments section below.

This is a very different answer for each client and a lot of potential clients see SEO as a kind of table stakes. They see SEO as something they must do when running an ecommerce business and to a certain extent I would agree.

I would also say that SEO is not always right for every client. If you are unsure of where your company stands, then keep reading, because I’m going to explain if or when your business should pass on investing in search engine optimization.

Not Enough Budget

This is the most common pitfall I see; in fact a small or almost nonexistent budget is almost always the case.  In my experience when it comes to budgeting for SEO there is NO half way.  What I tell my clients is you either commit or you skip SEO altogether.  Going half way or just doing “a little” SEO has the net effect of almost doing nothing at all, and if that’s the case you can likely get more ROI out of your money in other areas.

Every vertical is different in terms of what the “right budget” may be for search engine optimization and I’ve seen budgets as small as $2,500.00 per month that are effective.  The reality is the real budget for a fully automated SEO effort, whether a combination of in-house/ outsourced or a completely outsourced budget, is generally $7,500 – $20,000.  What I mean is, if you really want to compete and have yourself in a mildly competitive vertical, then you need to know that there is at least 2-3 competitors who have spent significant money on SEO, and you will have consistent pressure in that space.

“SEO is not cheap.”

The worst thing you can do is tell yourself, well, I can’t afford the 10K I really need to make a difference so I will commit 5K.  In my experience you are better off spending that money on paid search, better usability, or quality content for your site and just hold off on SEO.  The only positions for SEO that “really” matter are the top 2-3 and if you can’t get there and stay there, then it’s not worth the investment as the repayment period is quite long.

Basically even if you get into the game for 6 months at 10K a month, it’s going to take at least that length of time to see much movement and you’re already going to be 60K into your investment.

If you can’t see yourself being able to sustain a long term expensive investment, just avoid it for now.  You need to also think about what your average earning per transaction is, if you’re only making $3 per sale, is the traffic you seek even going to pay off?

Competing On Branded or Trademarked Terms

Here’s the easiest decision to make, and the one I have the most experience with.  It once was that you could get almost any site, to rank for almost any term, if you had an experienced aggressive SEO team on your side.  As the years went by and Google continued to tweak their algorithm it got more and more difficult to rank for terms not very closely related to your website.  Then one of the latest updates to the google search engine, made ranking for branded terms nearly impossible.

As an example, even if you have a website with a million links and it’s dedicated to DISH Network satellite, you will NEVER outrank the corporate website, in fact, the corporate website is going to occupy the top 3-5 positions.

This was a killer blow for affiliate marketers, and anyone new in the space, and at least in my opinion one should just avoid the potential money pit all together.

Now I am not saying that you cannot effectively rank well for fringe terms around a brand name, but your profit per sale had better be very high as it seems like the top 90% of branded related traffic is now going to the “official sites” regardless of their quality.  It’s better to just take that money and consider other forms of advertising.

Knowing Your “Money” Keywords

This is the easiest reason to hold off on search engine optimization.  There is a reason that experts like Aaron Wall always say – to run some Pay Per Click advertising first and foremost, before doing much Search Engine Optimization.  Google AdWords has a pretty nice system for goal conversion tracking, meaning you could spend $5000 on paid search and you will likely lose money, but what you are going to end up with is a list of keywords that actually lead to purchases.

“With this advantageous information you can use those keywords as your target keywords for your potential SEO campaign.”

Using this method is effective in two ways:
1) You can determine what keywords actually convert
2) You can better determine what kind of budget you are going to need to rank for those terms and if it’s even worth it or not.

What I mean about “using it to determine whether or not to run SEO,” is if say for example the only words that convert are extremely competitive on search. You can run a cost benefit analysis to see if it even makes sense to run SEO, essentially saving you A LOT more money down the line.

There is so much to talk about when it comes to whether or not SEO is right for your business, and you should feel free to continue the conversation below!

The fully free Internet Marketing Tools out there are generally useful for directional advice only. For example, even the Google Keyword Tool has only really been useful to generate a large list of keywords to bid on. The other half of what this tool claims to do is deliver overall traffic estimates, which in my experience is hardly useful at all.  That’s a free tool with the world’s biggest budget behind it so what would you expect from a tool that has a more realistic budget or team behind it?  I am not saying that all free software in the internet marketing world is invaluable, I am just saying to adjust your expectations if you’re looking for a free internet marketing tool.  With all that said, on to the ones that have helped me the most.

1 Crazy Egg

(free & paid versions)

Crazy Egg

This is one of my all-time favorite pieces of software and something of its type is an absolute must, if you care at all about usability.  In a nut shell, it’s a small tracking code you place on several pages on your website.  Once you do that, you will be able to login to the back-end, provided by Crazy Egg, to see exactly where on the page people are looking, clicking, and interacting.  The amount of ah-ha moment’s I have had because of this software are so numerous I’ve lost count.  It will guide you in important things like where to place a banner, where to put content, and if things you thought people we looking at are even important.  In a nutshell, this software makes your time so much more effective by focusing on the 5% of the web page that actually matters.  Even the paid version costs so little it should be a no-brainer for people looking for Internet Marketing tools. In my experience the ROI is unmatched, by many other tools you could use.

2 Ispionage

(free & paid versions)

ispionage

My direct knowledge about Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is somewhat limited from an implementation standpoint, but vast in terms of research, competitive analysis, and general high level consulting.  I’ve used about as many internet marketing tools for PPC research as anything else and I’ve used many of both the paid and unpaid tools.  The trouble I find in terms of using these sorts of tools to do research is, in my experience, very little knowledge that can simply be cut and pasted from competitors in almost any space.  There are a variety of reasons for this, most of which would go on a lot longer than this post should be, just remember no two businesses are the same just like no two AdWords accounts are the same, things just generally do not easily translate.  In terms of the cost of this tool it’s a bit up there, just over $100 a month. Keep in mind you’re using it to supplement a PPC account where you will likely be spending much more than $100/mo and that factor should make it an easy buy.  While it allows you to track a wide variety of competitors, keywords, and view data like market share the one really useful thing it gave me was ad copy history.

When you are launching a new PPC account, or trying to expand an old one Click through Rate (CTR) is a huge key to success.  If you’re like me ad copy doesn’t exactly come easy, writing effective ad copy takes practice and why would I try to spend time on something I am just not good at.  This tool allows me to track competitors in my space, ones I knew had great click through rates and high quality scores. Then I was able to use their ad copy as a jumping off point, making the necessary changes for my account specifically.  I cannot stress enough how much a few extra tenths of a percentage in CTR can change everything for your PPC account and this tool showed me that. It allowed me to easily see when people made changes and make judgment calls on why they made those changes.  This particular internet marketing tool has proved to be a great investment for me in the past as well as a great investment for anyone launching a Pay Per Click account or looking to expand an existing one.

3 Compete

(free & paid versions)

Compete

If you’re not new to the Internet Marketing game you already know about Compete.  Over the past 3 years I have used both their free tools as well as the paid version–with all the full features and it comes in handy for both PPC and SEO keyword research.  I want to say first and foremost one of the best things it offers is traffic estimates of competitors, but in my experience it’s been hard to really trust the numbers. It isn’t as if they have exact traffic estimates and you can just go plug in the site for your keyword and see how much traffic they get.  I use their traffic estimates purely as guidance, for example, this site “in general” gets more traffic than another and to also see “in general” how seasonality looks for a space.  I wouldn’t suggest their paid version as the first thing you purchase, there are better more valuable tools out there at their price point, but it’s a great site to gather some keyword data of competition and get some rough traffic estimates.

4 SEO For FireFox

SEO for Firefox

Back in the day, when SEO For Firefox first came out it was basically the best thing I had ever used in my life, I used it every single day, multiple times a day.  A few things have changed in terms of how well it works now, mostly because I think Google has changed a few things, but wow what an amazing tool.  When this tool is enabled, you can search Google and below each organic listing you can see a detailed breakdown of all of the most important SEO data. Basically it makes competitive analysis 100 times easier, faster, and more effective.  This internet marketing tool is a must have and what makes it better is it’s totally free.

5 Google Analytics

Google Analytics

Yes, it may seem given its position on the list that Google Analytics was a simple throw on, but it’s easy to overlook all the amazing data you can get from Google Analytics and how few people really harness even a small portion of all the data you can pull.  At its most basic yes it tells you how many visitors your website has and from where they came, but it’s so much more than that.

Ask yourself this, are you using its Goal Conversion feature?  Are you using Google Analytics for funnel analysis?  You would be so amazed how few people actually use the full offering Google Analytics has. It is invaluable when it comes to conversion tracking, determining keywords to target for PPC or SEO and so much more, oh yea and it’s free.  I know you are likely using it already but let me ask you this, could you be using more of what Google Analytics offers?  Grab a book like “Analytics in an Hour a Day” or something along that line and see just what you can do with it. This tool gives you a huge advantage most of your competitors are likely not using either.

I am sure there have been tools you have used along the road of your Internet Marketing travels, feel free to share them down below!

The Job
To set the tone of this particular campaign there are a few things you should know– the budget was fairly high, as much as 5-10K per day was allowed in spend, and the transaction had to happen off-site.  This is important and is also the major challenge in this task.  Getting people to say, click a Facebook Ad and become a “fan” of something, hell that’s as easy as uploading a risque icon for your ad.  Getting people to leave Facebook and make a purchase at a different website, now that’s a whole different ballgame indeed.

The Facebook campaign started with a couple of key pieces of information, Click Through Rates & Conversion Rates. I knew that Click Through Rates on Facebook is key, basically Facebook’s version of quality score, it seemed like in terms of ad serving it was the only important factor.
Having a strong CTR, in the eyes of Facebook, meant the difference between you paying a few cents per click – for thousands of clicks per day and paying a dollar a click – for only a few hundred, pretty big lever right?

Then factoring in Conversion Rates is just as important of a lever to pull, you’ve got two really important things to address that in general have two totally different goals.  You don’t want your ad to be too general and be paying for enormous amounts of clicks with very few sales, but you don’t want the ad to be too exclusionary, garner too few clicks and have a low CTR. This would lead to Facebook rarely serving your ad and totally taxing your ass when they do.

This post is by no means a definitive guide, but more a place to get together and discuss a couple of the things I learned from the campaign. It’s also to give you an option, in the comments below to share some of what you’ve learned about Facebook advertising.

Getting People to “Like” or “Become a Fan” of you with Facebook Ads

Getting people to simply “like” things, if that is you’re goal, is easily and very cheaply accomplished I found likewise getting people to be a “fan” of something was also similarly easy to do with proper targeting. It’s just you get what you pay for there, a lot of people will say they “like” something, that takes a second, it’s a whole different ballgame to get them to actually purchase something.  I found it’s best to also consider long term here by trying to get them into an email auto responder if you can.  “Likes” and “fans” are great for an ego, but pretty useless in terms of sales.

You have better got a pretty good long term funnel for contacting these people, and simply posting to your wall isn’t often going to get it done. Sure, some spammy internet marketer out there makes money off it here and there, but it’s not for most traditional businesses.  Think about what YOU do when you see someone “likes” something. Many people say to themselves, “Hmm so and so likes toothpaste.” You don’t say, “Holy crap I have to buy some toothpaste because so and so likes it.” Only if you’re a Hollywood Star would that probably work.  The key take away here is “likes” and “fans” are great, but I have channels on YouTube with thousands of subscribers, millions of views, and not a single person has ever bought a single thing from me.

If you are looking to grow your “fans” or “likes” on Facebook the lessons learned are fairly easy.  Simply follow the most basic rules of any advertising, start with 5-10 versions of your ad, some with small variations and a few others that are drastically different.

In general I sought out and found a great picture, since targeting is the most important thing to keep in mind.  What I did next was create about 5 ads with 5 different pictures (no surprises here, sex sells) and the exact same copy.  For the pictures some cleavage or a picture of a shirtless ripped dude always seemed to work better. 
Once you find a few pictures that perform well, then start tweaking the ad copy. I made it a habit to always be uploading new ads, literally a tenth of a percentage on CTR was powerful enough to drastically reduce the cost of bids as well as the reach.

Make sure before you launch any advertising on facebook that you take the time to make your Fan Page interesting, make sure you have loads of interesting information. Take advantage of the branding options by including a banner, take the time to add some photos and most importantly you must remember to interact with your “fans”.  Think of your Facebook Fan Page as your landing page; make sure you have ways for your “fans” to interact with you and add value.  You will also want to take the time to give your potential “likes” or “fans” ways to learn more about you, like a link to your personal website, etc.

If You Want Them To Leave Facebook To An External Site To Buy

This is much more difficult, there were a couple of things I learned along the way with this approach.  The most important thing is that Facebook didn’t seem to care much about the external site, as long as the site wasn’t totally over the line or restricted in some way.  So score one for the marketer! I started with a web page more like what Google would want and ended up with a pretty effective little squeeze page.

You do, however, pay to play when it comes to external clicks, so ad copy and click through rate is even more important.  Facebook can’t control the environment when a person leaves, and more importantly they can’t make money off of a person clicking on more ads, so they tax the marketer for those clicks.  You really have to be optimized before you would even bother to launch ads to make those types of clicks profitable.

You have to implement some sort of opt-in program on your external site for re-marketing, have a highly converting landing page, and strong profit margins before you even attempt it.

One thing I did to make the conversion a little better was to create a landing page “Facebook Themed” to promote the “Facebook Only” offers.  When I first launched the campaign I quickly found this approach worked much better and it made me wonder if copying the Facebook style more would have worked better or worse. Basically I would try to make the person feel like they were still on a Facebook type site, but I never really got a chance to test that theory.

The best Facebook campaigns I was able to run consisted of constant ad testing, external links, and constant data running.

The Bottom Line:  Even if you implement everything discussed, there are just some products better suited for Facebook advertising than others.

I look forward to your comments and thoughts about Facebook Advertising below.

There is one type of web professional that has emerged since February ’11 that fascinates me: The Post-Panda Whiner. In the past year, you’ve probably encountered at least one person who falls in this category. Maybe you’ve been in line at Starbucks and overheard someone saying how Panda is driving his website out of business. Or maybe you’ve hired an SEO who keeps telling you, “Our efforts would be so much more successful if it wasn’t for Panda… Blame Google, not me!” And of course, if you’ve been at any conference where Matt Cutts of Google’s Search Quality Team has spoken, you’ve seen dozens of Post-Panda Whiners readying their torches and pitchforks.

Of course, every major algorithm update results in large amounts of vitriol from the SEO community. But, for some reason, Panda has had an oddly enduring effect on the industry, and the entitled cries of “It’s not fair!” show no sign of stopping any time soon. So now it’s time to clear the air, take a look at the reality of Google Panda, and see if there’s any justification in the complaining.

What, Exactly, is Google Panda Looking For?

As of this writing, there have been 10 updates to Panda which have tweaked its ability to detect low-quality sites. But even with these updates, Panda is still looking for the same major factors as when it was first unveiled:

• Low-quality content
• An overabundance of on-site advertising
• User signals

Low quality content can be very subjective, and this is probably the ranking factor that most people have gotten up in arms about. The first sites to feel the sting from this update were content farms (such as EzineArticles and eHow) and content scraper sites. These two types of sites work towards a similar goal: To produce huge amounts of content and rank for as many keywords as possible. This allows them to monetize their pages through ad networks, such as AdSense, for a seemingly unlimited number of topics.

The means they use to reach this end, however, are very different. Content farms employ freelance writers, or trade backlinks for articles to help marketers boost client link profiles. Scrapers, as the name suggests, use bots to steal existing content from other sources and post it on a monetized site. Sometimes the scrapers will also use content spinning to ensure they are posting versions of the scraped content that are unique to the search engines (but usually nonsensical to human readers).

As Google updated Panda, more and more sites have been penalized for low quality content. E-commerce sites that use manufacturer product descriptions, price comparison sites with little to no content, and even unique pages with an overabundance of spelling and grammar errors have seen drops in search ranking.

The penalty for too much on-site advertising can seem confusing at first, since Google has penalized even those who excessively use its own AdSense platform. But when you consider the reasoning for this, it makes perfect sense. As I mentioned before, content farms and scraper sites used to bog down Google searches with content of questionable intent and varying quality.

Some people took this tactic a step further and created extremely niche sites with a few “informational” pages that had been optimized to death for long tail searches with high buying intent. For example, it may be difficult to rank on the first page of the SERPs for “running shoes,” but it’s much easier when you target a very specific phrase with fewer searches like “Which brand of running shoe is best for marathons?” By targeting the long tail, many were able to rank for pages featuring poorly-written (but well-optimized) content, and make a fair chunk of change through ad networks and affiliate links.

One thing to note about Google is that they hate being embarrassed. And it was only a matter of time before sites that not only used the engine’s algorithm but also its ad network to clutter the SERPs would be punished.
User signals are the final major component of the Panda update. It’s no secret that Google is using social proof – tweets containing back links, +1s, reviews on trusted shopping sites, etc. – as a factor in its rankings. Sites are also being rewarded for legitimate user activity on-site. An active community forum, blog comments and on-site reviews of products can go a long way to make a site more visible in the SERPs.

But these sources of user engagement have been gamed for years. That’s why Google is now taking a look behind the scenes at data such as bounce rate, time on site and pages per visit. Poor performance in these categories is often the result of a poor user experience on a website, and now this can result in a huge rankings penalty.

What Does This All Mean?

There is a huge misconception out there that Google Panda’s sole purpose was to make SEO overly difficult. Sadly, this myth has been created by a small percentage of online marketing professionals, and I apologize on behalf of the industry for these dunces.

The truth is that Panda makes SEO easier for those who have been doing things right all these years. To be blunt, those who have been hurt most by Panda have either hired a lazy SEO analyst or have a site that just plain sucks.
So what can you do to ensure you are safe from a Panda penalty?

1. Make sure your content is original and high quality – Yes, as I mentioned early, good content can be expensive content. But what costs more: Making sure your product descriptions are unique and free of grammatical errors, or losing all of your organic conversions?
2. Keep on-site advertising to a minimum – If you’re in the e-commerce space, this is really a no-brainer. But if you’re running a blog, news, or information-based site and you suddenly see a downward trend in organic traffic, it may be time to curtail the amount of ads and affiliate links on your site.
3. Build a Better User Experience – Test your site’s usability. Give visitors a way to interact with your site and rate their experience or purchases. Make your presence known on social media outlets. The more user signals Google sees surrounding your site, the better.

Display Advertising Trends for 2012
• social media
• video or rich media
• mobile
• “right ad, right person”

Here is also a handy chart from Paul Verna of eMarketer showing the increase use of smartphones, tablets, video and more. This gives a bigger picture on why it’s important to focus on these trends.

Social media

This is not exactly a new trend, but one that is still continuing on.  Seeing what a friend or someone you follow on social networks creates trust and credibility for what you are advertising.

Advertising display ads with the logo and a link back to the companies social media page or a “like” or “+1”  can help with branding a product or service.

Engaging the user with interaction within the banner can be helpful as well as social media is also known as an entertainment platform.

image from  5 New Year’s Resolutions for Display Advertisers

It seems that promoting a company’s Facebook page with updates and links is a better investment as the click through rates show:

“For comparison, links posted by Pages have nearly 3x the CTR of Facebook ads which average 0.05% CTR, and they top online display ads which average a 0.1% CTR according to Webtrends.” – Josh Constine TechCrunch

Video and Rich Media

Video is a way of display advertising that has increased in use and is particularly helpful with branding as well. Flash is not dead, but Google has indicated (through their chart below) that flash ads are less effective than video and rich media.

These “click to play” ads are helpful as well as it gives the user the choice to play the ad while still acting as a useful static ad. This then gives the user more control and prompts them to click and to engage further to the landing page. Overall a much better and more effective option, over the annoying pop-ups and videos of some ads.

image from  5 New Year’s Resolutions for Display Advertisers

Mobile

Mobile advertising has been on the rise for the last few years and will continue to do so. Today’s technology and people are on-the-go and want more than ever the access to information at their fingertips. Tablets have been increasing in use and since they have a larger format are easier for consumer shopping as well as advertising.

When it comes to mobile advertising there are a few sizes (mainly leaderboard shown) that there are to consider:

Mobile Display Ad Sizes

Info above referenced from Mobile Marketing Association – Mobile Advertising Guidelines 5.0

When it comes to smartphones if you’re not advertising on this mobile outlet you should be.

It’s a common staple and an integral part of marketing today since most everyone has a mobile device. What’s great about these mobile devices is that you can obtain the action that you want now. With the “click to call” “click to map” and many other “click to…” options you get the user to possibly convert faster and easier; especially if your end result would be for a user to call and purchase a product or service.

some images from  5 New Year’s Resolutions for Display Advertisers

Right Ad, Right person

The best way for a company to obtain conversions is to advertise to someone who is already looking for what the company is selling. It’s a pretty simple theory, but somewhat tricky to accomplish.

If you do find the right niche of consumer who is interested (or have clicked) in what you advertise, you can then retarget and show the ad to that same user as a helpful reminder to persuade the user to click through again, and hopefully complete the desired end action.

So now the bigger more pending thought at hand. What does it really mean to have the “right ad” for the “right person”?

What if when you searched for something you only received ads for what you were searching for, ads that would actually help you, no random fat burning pill ads or ads for stuff that you would never consider ever getting. Wouldn’t the experience of searching for what you wanted be a much better, faster and more efficient way of finding what you were looking for?  Ahh perhaps someday, but for now we can try to live by the simple recipe that google offers for the perfect display ad.

“The right person
+ the right message
+ the right time
+ the right context
= the perfect ad.”

When it comes to these (and many other) trends for display advertising, you should probably beef up your social media efforts, make some video ads and see how they perform and if you are not advertising on the mobile network (which you really should be already) then get on board and start getting some mobile ads out there.

Overall don’t forget that there is always the “right ad” for the “right person” and if you find that niche, your advertising efforts will make users lives much easier, and will also make your life easier and more profitable.

Any other helpful trends that you’ve found for 2012? Feel free to share the knowledge and comment below!

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