Jeremy Web[b]

The Search Engine Guide is a good, readable summary of hot internet marketing news that is real relevance to small business owners. Read a summary of the top news items.

Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

Search engine marketing news and information you can use to grow your business.

• Google Improves Control of PPC Exposure With Modified Broad Match

  (Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:59:12 -0600)

  by Mike Fleming

  

  If you manage a PPC account, you know that for several years now AdWords has had three match types: exact, phrase, and broad.  You also know what they mean and how your keywords are matched to search queries.  Up until a couple of years ago, broad match meant that the keywords in your phrase were matched to queries that had all of your words in any order.

  Then, broad match became "expanded broad match" where Google's algorithm was given free reign to decide if search queries were a close enough match in search intent to show your ad.  Many of the results were not even close.  Your keyword could be business cards and your ad would show on state ids and business plans.

  The overwhelming advantage of broad match of course is that you get more impressions, clicks and conversions; although you most likely would have a lower conversion rate that will make you pay more for each conversion.  So for some it works and for some not so much.  The major disadvantage is that you have to spend time going through your search queries very often to weed out those that are not applicable to your business because you paid for clicks state ids and business plans.

  But now, Google has given us another...

• Do Keywords In Your Domain Matter?

  (Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:19:00 -0600)

  by Sage Lewis

  

  
  
  This is a question I get asked all the time. Get the final answer right here.
  
  Inspired from this article at Search Engine Roundtable

  

  Be sure and visit our small business news site.

  
  

  
  

• Don't Let Good Content Die - 4 Ways to Keep It Alive

  (Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:35:54 -0600)

  by Stoney deGeyter

  

  Much like life, websites have to adapt over time. When they don't, they risk becoming stagnant, outdated, stale, and boring. As times change, so should your content. Content that was once relevant becomes irrelevant or in need of an update, old products get dumped in favor of new products, and data becomes outdated and needs to be replaced.

  There are any number of reasons why content needs to be changed, freshened up, or removed altogether. But rarely, if ever, do you want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Something can usually be salvaged. Previously valuable content can be made valuable again. Here are four ways you can keep good content alive, even when it's old.

  

  Keep content up to date

  Keeping your content up-to-date may sound like a simple task; but, the larger the site, the more difficult it is. Sites with hundreds or thousands of pages often have a lot of little hidden gems that can easily become stale or irrelevant. Over time, you see products and services change. A simple reference to an old pricing structure or outdated way of doing things can really throw a wrench in the works for the reader. Conflicts and contradictions breed mistrust.

  Failing to find and correct these nuggets will send your readers a message that perhaps you are stale and irrelevant as well. So, spending time on a...

• Adapting to a Social Media Fast

  (Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:29:06 -0600)

  by Mike Moran

  

  Some of you might know that I like to take Augusts off. While not completely off the grid (I still clean out my e-mail—although I don't reply much—and I still moderate comments on my blog), I don't write any blog posts (on my blog or here at Search Engine Guide), and I stay off Twitter. I also don't read any blog posts or check out what others are saying on Twitter—it's a social media fast. Each year, it's interesting to find myself picking up a newspaper again. This year, I did something a bit different, because I actually returned to work on August 25th because of a client need, but I continued to stay away from social media for the last week, just to see what it was like. It's one thing for me to avoid social media while I am on vacation, but what would it feel like during my work day?

  

  Image via Wikipedia

  Well, the verdict is in. It felt very strange. As easy as it is for me to drop out of social media while on vacation and just hang with my wife and play with the kids, once I am back at work, it felt very odd to not know what is going on.

  I mean, I had been away for three weeks on vacation, so I...

• Is 2011 The Year of the Social Media Bubble

  (Sat, 28 Aug 2010 11:52:21 -0600)

  by Eric Brown

  

  Several camps are starting to chant that 2011 may well be the year of The Social Media Bubble. I would not proclaim to be able to predict the future by any means, but it sure seems more probable than not. While having little experience predicting the future, we have had an up close and personal relationship with the real estate bubble. Developing real estate used to be a pretty fun endeavor, however the past couple of years of operating our boutique apartment rental business in SE Michigan has had more challenges than we ever imagined. But as with all struggles, there has been a bright side, a bubble burst quickly trims out the weeds and the low hanging fruit.
  
  Perhaps a Social Media Weeding is forthcoming
  2010 has been the year that many small and mid size businesses have taken the plunge, and embraced the throws of Social Media Marketing. With that, nearly every unemployed straggler has hung out their Social Media Consultant shingle.
  
  As reported in the Harvard Business Review...
  

  "During the subprime bubble, banks and brokers sold one another bad debt -- debt that couldn't be made good on. Today, "social" media is trading in low-quality connections -- linkages that are unlikely to yield meaningful, lasting relationships."

  Low Barrier to Entry
  Whenever the barrier to entry is low, to non existent, pitfalls loom. While the real estate bubble happened due to a multitude of reasons, whenever someone...

• PPC Testing Made Easier with AdWords Campaign Experiments

  (Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:39:40 -0600)

  by Mike Fleming

  

  If you take your PPC campaigns seriously (why wouldn't you?), you're always testing.  Always.  It's the only way to accomplish long-term growth and gain insights that will translate into all of your other marketing channels.  One problem that has been inherent since the beginning of PPC is the inability to do true A/B split-testing with variables like keywords, bids, ad text, ad groups, match types, dynamic keyword insertion, etc.

  Yes, you could test them, but only by comparing metrics from different time periods (except for ads).  For example, you'd have to run ads at a certain bid price for a while, change it, and run them at the new bid price for a while.  Then, you'd have to compare the results from different time periods.  The problem? When you would compare the results, you would be likely to assume the differences in those key metrics to be the result of the changes.  But fluctuations in demand, shifts in competitor tactics, and uncontrollable circumstances (special events, etc.) can complicate things.

  Google's example of this involves advertising for soccer balls.  "Let's say you're advertising soccer balls, and you decide to increase your bids to get more traffic. Two days later, the World Cup starts, and your clicks and impressions increase substantially. If you had simply raised the bids in your campaign without running an experiment, you...

• How to Ensure Your Website Gets Some Action

  (Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:04:07 -0600)

  by Stoney deGeyter

  

  When it comes to getting your visitors to take action, whether that be a sale, download, request, or call, it's your content that is going to either make it happen or leave people blowing in the wind like a sagebrush through a ghost town. If there is anything that all the years of marketing research has proven it's that people need to be told what to do if you expect them to do anything at all.

  Think about it. If you're not telling your visitors what to do next, how can you expect them to do it? Sure, they can guess, make assumptions or "figure it out on their own". But, for anybody that's doing anything new, directions are a God send.

  I recently spent 2 hours putting together a desk that should have taken me 20 minutes. I'll be the first to admit that I'm generally more destructive than constructive when it comes to these kinds of things, but with a little help (a.k.a. reading directions), I can usually get the job done. But, on this particular desk, the directions actually didn't help. Not even a little.

  The desk had two pieces: the main desk and a small side table. Both look nearly identical, only the size is different. The directions started you out building the small table...but they didn't make that clear. I spent at least 30 minutes putting together the larger desk with the small table instructions, wondering why things just weren't...

• Best Buy, Orwell and Minority Report

  (Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:19:05 -0600)

  by Sage Lewis

  

  
  
  Best Buy wants you to tell them the moment you walk into the store.
  
  From Marketing Pilgrim: "The "shopkick" system is designed to detect and reward shoppers just for walking into a Best Buy store. In order to accomplish this feat, consumers must download an application to their smart phone. "
  
  What do you think of this? I'm all about it!

  

  Be sure and visit our small business news site.