Do you favor pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or search engine optimization (SEO) when it comes to revving up traffic and conversions to your website? This webinar on Tuesday, Sept. 14 at 1 pm ET will help you understand the benefits and differences of PPC and SEO and how they can work in tandem. We’ll give you nine ways they can work together to get you the conversions you want.
Trada’s complimentary webinar will leave you with a firm understanding of how to use both to supercharge your conversions.
This webinar will be led by our account manager Dan Tisser. If you think we pick Dan to lead our webinars because of his radio voice, well that’s true. But it’s also true that Dan has an incredible knowledge of PPC and SEO, which is the main reason he’s frequently selected to do webinars.
In this webinar you’ll learn:
How PPC and SEO interplay to increase site traffic and conversions
Tips on ranking high in both SEO and PPC and why it matters
When and where to allocate your marketing dollars
Ways to provide more relevancy and earn more clicks
How to use both PPC and SEO to refine your messaging
As always, Trada would love to hear in the comment section if you have any suggestions on future webinar topics.
Our investor from Foundry Group, Seth Levine, was interviewed on StockTwits TV yesterday. Please skip over around the 3:50 mark when he informs Howard Lindzon that StockTwits is his favorite portfolio company, as Seth must have had a hard fall on one of his bike rides. Unfortunate.
Speaking of Seth, he recently posted an excellent blog post on convertible debt as a funding method for startups that is a must read. Great discussion in the comments section.
Speaking of interviews, our CEO Niel Robertson was recently interviewed on Webmaster Radio at the Search Engine Strategies conference. You can listen to a quick 20-minute podcast.
So what has been Trada been up to since announcing Google Ventures invested in us? Turns out, it’s been a lot. But no worries. It’ll be easier to get up to speed on Trada than your favorite soap opera. And thankfully, unlike your fave soap operas no Trada employee has undergone SORAS.
This past week, Trada won a Boulder IQ award, which was very humbling. Especially, since the company following us came up with a way to quickly determine how much blood a patient has lost. If we haven’t said it lately, Trada really loves Boulder. This is our CEO Niel’s third startup in Boulder, which is directly correlated to how Boulder permeates awesomeness.
Trada sponsored a Search Engine Land webinar with Jeremiah Andrick (@jeremiah) of Logitech about demystifing your CPA, which you can watch on the Search Engine Land website. Trada also did a webinar on getting your holiday paid search campaign ready, and you can watch the recorded version on Vimeo. September is the perfect time to starting thinking about your holiday paid search.
My co-workers thought I should attend Search, PR and the Social Butterfly. It was moderated by Susan Bratton (@susanbratton), Co-founder, Personal Life Media; Lisa Buyer (@lisabuyer), President & CEO, The Buyer Group; Kristjan Mar Hauksson (@optimizeyourweb), Founder and Director of Search & Online Communications, Nordic eMarketing; Sally Falkow (@sallyfalkow), President, PRESSfeed and Brett Tabke, CEO, WebmasterWorld.
When searching for this session, I was surprised that this content came up in a blog post for March 25 by Outspoken Media. They recycled the session from a previous SES, which I think is rather lame. But let’s move on.
Sally Falkow brought up the importance of Google Caffeine and how real-time social media content is being indexed instantly and the importance of social media. Sally referenced the Matt Cutts video explaining Google Caffeine (below).
Now you need sustainable organic growth requires a commitment to fresh content. Google is also now looking at how often people cite you rather than just how often they link to you.
Sally says not only is important to have content all over the Web but to have a place on your website that houses all of your social media sites. She referenced Debbie Weil as saying it’s one of the most common SEO mistakes companies make by not having a single directory for their social media content.
While you can reach your audience directly, but you still want mainstream media to be able to find you. She referenced Winston-Salem in North Carolina on how they syndicated content and how when the release content, they just watch the Google Alerts role in. Yet, I can’t find this to link to on Google. Am I missing something?
She also mentions that journalists go looking for information on social media sites. This is something that Trada has definitely seen. What’s more is that we’ve definitely seen the value of having a YouTube channel as journalists frequently embed our How Trada Works Video. Everyone is looking for unique content, and a company you need to figure out how you can deliver upon that.
The point Sally makes that I love is don’t get too wrapped up in trying to find the biggest influencers. She referenced a client who wanted to get on Apartment Therapy but it was a much smaller blogger that ended up sending more targeted traffic.
Lisa Buyer said PR has changed and it’s not coming back. And that she’s excited about. Me too. Because old PR was really boring and we never knew how successful it was.
Lisa referenced the sheer number of reporters on social media sites, and how often they find story ideas through their circle. At Trada, we have a Tweetdeck column dedicated solely on reporters in the search engine space.
Today’s PR needs to be optimized, publicized and socialized. She quotes Lee Odden – “If it can be optimized, it can be found.” Lisa referenced the services people can use to distribute content – Trada uses PitchEngine and PRWeb. Lisa also discussed HARO as a way to see what reporters are looking for sources. As a side note, Trada advertised on HARO and had fantastic success with it as a lead generation tool Her other tip was that you should distribute a release every 30 days to stay in Google news.
According to Brett Tabke, “SEO is not a profession, it is a lifestyle.”Brett says you have to optimize all of your content even e-mails.
Brett’s theory is that we’re in an evolution not revolution and references our advantage in seeing social media sites reach their tipping point. He references how PubCon spent $65,000 in paid search over four years and yet they had zero tracked sales for the conference. They did ads, e-mails, etc. and it was moderately successful. In 2008, the banking crisis caused a dead stop to PubCon. They decided as a marketing conference, they had to get serious about marketing.
As Brett said in a crisis, your best friend is SurveyMonkey, and they surveyed all past attendees. They decided to get in front of people with Twitter. Tweeting a one-time broadcast event and retweeting is when it enters reruns according to Brett. So in 2009, they switched to all Twitter, all of the time. They went up 30 percent attendance in a down year.
One tip Brett gave was to target people using Klout to find highly influential people on Twitter. They reached out to really interesting people on Klout and asked them how they could work together. He said it worked for them in spades when they tweeted and blogged about the conference in getting the word out.
Kristjan referenced is that while we understand that journalists do research online but we don’t understand the context. His case study is a recent story on how Beyonce was accused of stealing clothes from a designer. He did a fascinating timeline that I’m not fast enough to type showing the first time the story went live to went mass media started picking it up.
They also found us journalists used 2.5 keywords while Canadian journalists used 3.3 keywords. Yet neither Twitter or Facebook were strong in referring traffic.Kristjan said not to only look at the rise in visitors but who comes in. Are the stakeholders coming in? You can see that by using YWA to get the data you need.
The panel despite being recycled content exceeded my expectations.
I really wanted to attend this panel on all the components – content, navigation, design, technical development, and SEO – of a successful website. Mainly, because we’re in the midst of redesigning our website, and I want to make sure we’re nailing it.
The panelists were Shari Thurow, Founder & SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive and Eleanor Hong, Lead Editor, SEO, ABCNews.com. Adam Audette (@audette), President, AudetteMedia was stuck in Bend, Oregon.
I have no background in SEO or Information Architechture. So I am a couple steps behind. More than a couple. Shari is a lively but fast speaker.
Shari talked about why information architecture matters from an SEO standpoint. Because you lose customers when they can’t find what they want. The design/development costs spiral out of control when you have to redo your work in 6 months because the site doesn’t support findabilty. I didn’t even know findability was a word.
Information architecture affects crawability, indexation, rankings and appearance of search listings.
So three slides into it – Shari defined what IA is. According to SEO professionals it is: crawlability, indexation, PageRank (PR) sculpting, Siloing, Server performance, parameter handling and interfact (page design).
IA should be arranged not by keywords by task, topic, target audience (e.g. patient vs doctor), alphabetical if the site is too big or even file type.
Labels should be unique, distinguishable and scannable. If links aren’t distinguishable, then people “pogo stick” and jump between pages. This decreases your chance of conversion. In a footer – what’s the difference between a Kauai vacation rental and a Kauai luxury vacation rental or a Kauai condo rental. Needs more distinguishing.
The #1 thing people say in usability testing is WTF as their frustration mounts as they get confused.
With IA, you can’t make everything a priority because then nothing becomes a priority. Don’t put too many or too few links in the primary or footer navigation. What sections are you going to emphasize on the homepage?
Shari also referenced the difference between how a user’s mental model doesn’t match a representative model (how SEO experts/designers think about search). To make them match, you need to observe users, do field interviews, expectancy tests, usability tests, etc.
Some common IA mistakes:
SEO professionals ask leading questions when performing usability tests.
Don’t perform formative and validative usability tests – force their mental models onto others.
Don’t copy another information architecture because it won’t necessarily for your company.
Don’t consider IA AFTER a site is built.
A nice way to think about SEO. It’s not Search Engine Optimization but rather optimizing for those people who use search engines and matching their mental model.
Eleanor Hong talked about the challenges of big content sites. There is tension between a good user experience and business goals.
She also points out that microsites and subdomains aren’t a good solution to poor IA. She asks an interesting question for media sites – where is home? Meaning if you’re on Good Morning America, is your homepage Good Morning America or ABC?
“Search: Where to Next?” seemed a relevant fit to attend given Trada is the first company to employ a crowdsourcing model for paid search.
Shashi presents at Search Engine Strategies
The panelists were Graham Mudd (@grahammudd), Vice Present & Media, comScore; Brian Kaminski, Chief Operating Officer, iProspect; Marc Poirer (@marcpoirier), Co-Founder and CMO, Acquisio; and Shashi Seth (@shashiseth), Senior Vice President, Search Products, Yahoo!
As Marc Poirer of Acquisio noted – In 2009, adults spent 34 percent of media time online but only 12 percent of media spend is spent on paid search. Marc believes that improved tracking and attribution will change this spend. He also believes that real-time bidding on display (RTB) will occur. This is a huge pain point for me. I do the display ad purchases for Trada and it is massive paperwork and time to do individual ad buys. Display ads is also a future event for Trada as well.
Marc believes search marketers will transition to performance marketers. And as Marc noted, display advertising provides even more data than paid search. As part of this transition, companies will need to start hiring mathematician and data analysts to help companies understand this data. At Trada, we have an employee, Andreas, who is dedicated entirely to data. As we noted in our post on Jeff Ma’s book on data that businesses aren’t comfortable with data until they have the right resources/people to deal with it.
Brian from iProspect talks about seizing the opportunity. Brian referenced the eponymous Ferris Bueller quote – “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” His point was that we need to stay up-to-date on paid search.
Brian believes that in 5 years, people will not use search engines. He shared 5 clues about the future of paid search.
Data will be required – Those who are genuinely modeling data and understanding true connections, will have an advantage. Marketers should invest in technology that moves data forward and invests in people with heavy data skills.
Real Time & Connected – He believes search engines will push more real results including Twitter and blogging, and data is influenced by those in your social networks. I think we’re already seeing this will search engines like One Riot and real-time Twitter results.
Search will be non PC - He believes that mobile searches will outpace PC uses. The focus for marketers should be on mobile.
Media will be planned to drive search - He believes marketers will be working to drive users to search, and that search will play more of a central role in marketing.
Search will be less about keywords - Brian believes search will be related to camera or barcodes, voice search or even picture search.
To take advantage of this, more budget should be set aside for testing and innovation.
Shashi Seth from Yahoo! talked about how users needs and expectations have changed drastically over the past 10 years. This seemed self evident to me. Of course, people have less patience for getting search results. We’re no longer dialing up from AOL like we were 10 years ago. He was right that search hasn’t invested enough money to find relevant results related to our social network.
Shashi also give insight into the Yahoo!/Bing partnership. He said they’re taking their focus from the back-end of search and instead of investing on the front-end of search. If you’re interested in a Spanish restaurant in San Francisco, you can type in “Spanish restaurant San Francisco.” But what if you’re looking for a specific menu item? Yahoo! is looking to answer that and bring you restaurants that serve paella in San Francisco.
Overall, I thought the panel was extremely dry, especially in comparison to the Jeffrey Hayzlett keynote. The big takeaways was to pay attention to your data and to really understand it, that search is moving to mobile and that real time search results need to get more relevant.
The first session to kick off Search Engine Strategies: San Francisco is Jeffrey Hayzlett (@jeffreyhayzlett), the former CMO of Kodak. Kodak, despite its aging technology, worked hard to court bloggers.
As mentioned in his introduction, Forbes calls him the “Celebrity CMO,” which raises an interesting question. Is Celebrity CMO a title to attain for? If you’re a CMO, wouldn’t you rather have someone refer to you as the most successful or results driven CMO?
After asking for an Amen for Search, Jeffrey told some cheerful and energetic stories to wake the crowd up. Jeffrey is the author of a book, called the “Mirror Test.” It refers to doing a mirror test to Kodak to ensure it was still alive. As Jeffrey said, Kodak is passionate about Kodak moments and capturing those moments on film.
Jeffrey was talking about elevator pitches, and he makes the valid point – elevator pitches have become way too long. He came up with a new version, and he came up with a new elevator pitch – the 118. 8 seconds is the average attention span of an adult. 110 seconds is the average ride of an elevator ride in New York. You have 8 seconds to hook someone and you have 110 seconds to sell something. You have 118 seconds for your elevator pitch.
He wants marketers to cause tension. He said – no pain, no gain. We should cause good healthy debate as marketer on what is right for brand. I wish my boss Bill Quinn (@billquinn) was here. I LOVE to debate. Points to me.
Another point made was that as a marketing team, we can only move as fast as the slowest common denominator. That if marketers are slowing down your company, you need to hunt them down and ask them to leave. Because as an organization, you can only move as fast as your slowest employee.
A story I loved is how Jeffrey talked about a campaign Kodak ran that cost MILLIONS using a Soprano character in movie theaters asking people to text. When the results trickled in, they had two responses. TWO people texted. When they reviewed the reasons for this, an astute employee pointed out that while in movie theaters, attendees turn off their cell phones. Hence the poor response. But as Jeffrey pointed out, no one is going to die. Yes, it was horrible but the campaign was well loved, and they knew they could re-purpose it.
The name of their blog is a 1,000 Words because a picture is worth a thousand words. They also have a blog called a 1,000 Nerds for their scientists and researchers. Because it is so cold in Rochester, they have nothing to do but “invent shit” all day. (Although 1,000 Nerds seems to have switched to names to Plugged In.)
With the Kodak blog, he talks about the importance of having a personality. The example he used was introducing an “eye camera” on April 1. The camera had incredible faux features including the ability to blink and take a picture. Kodak beat Google for having the best April 1st prank. To have a company become social, he says companies need to incorporate the four E’s: engage, educate, excite and evangelize. Kodak listens to its Tweets. After someone complained that the Kodak Zi6 didn’t include a mike jack, they included it in the next iteration.
Jeffrey asks the question to others, “What is the return on ignoring?” when asked what the ROI on social media is.
As Jeffrey asked, “Can I get an Amen for Search?” AMEN!
If you’re an online retailer you know the drill and if you’re an online retailer and don’t know the Holiday SEM drill – listen up.
Believe it or not, you’ve got to start your holiday SEM campaign sooner than you think. Holiday keywords are searched regularly as early as AUGUST!
Sadly, it’s true. And it’s true for E commerce business of all sizes
Small BIZ: this is your chance to brand yourself and inform people on how cool and unique your products are.
Bigger BIZ: search always helps with branding, but it can also keep potential clients updated on new offers and products you have. Also, use your SEM campaigns as an extension of other advertising you might be running (display/print).
We can help you get your fundamentals ready now. According to Google, in first 30 days of Q4 $15,000,000 was spent in online shopping.Take advantage of this huge market! Below are a few tips on just how to do it.
Build SEM around stats and spikes in sales from holidays in years past. Plan for this holiday season based to how your campaigns preformed this time last year. Take a look at your holiday sales trends from last year – review keywords, ads, referring sites and popular buying times.
Run a complete competitive analysis on your competitor’s holiday campaign. What are they offering for the holidays? What keywords are they bidding on? Know what you’re up against. If they don’t guarantee shipping by a specific date – maybe you can. Savvy online shoppers will notice.
Write campaigns with buying cycle in mind: Interest, Research, Purchase. Keywords and campaign will evolve and change as client searches and needs change. By November many shoppers are doing a lot of price comparisons.
Write ad groups specifically around popular products - if you have a few items for sale that run the chance of selling out. When that product is gone you can easily turn off the campaign. You’ll save money by not paying for clicks that won’t convert and save time by just turning off one ad group instead of painstakingly searching through long keyword lists and irrelevant ads.
We are sponsoring a webinar on Search Engine Land on helping companies understand the cost per acquisition. The webinar will be on Tuesday, Aug. 24th at 1 pm. Our presenter is the brilliant marketer Jeremiah Aldrick (@jeremiah) from Logitech, and our account manager Matt Hessler (@fasterstill) will be there as well. Sign up for the webinar at Search Engine Land!
The webinar will cover the following:
Understanding what it costs to acquire a customer can be a search marketer’s headache — or it can be the key to creating and budgeting for a successful digital marketing campaign. In this webcast, we’ll look at what goes into coming up with an accurate Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), how to integrate CPA into an e-Commerce search marketing campaign, and how to maximize PPC while keeping CPA in mind.
Attend this webcast and learn:
How to calculate CPA using “backward math”
What is the relationship between PPC, SEO and CPA
When to recognize — and how to correct — a miscalculated CPA
Our team at Trada will be attending and exhibiting Search Engine Strategies in San Francisco from Aug. 17 – 18. We’ll be at Booth 207. Please come and say hello.
Not only will be across from the coffee station and offering free biscotti, but you’ll be able to see demonstrations of how Trada uses a crowdsourcing model to build sophisticated paid search strategies. Also, if you’re interested in learning how to become a Trada optimizer, come by the booth to get more information.
At our booth, you’ll also be able to meet some of our Trada team members including our CEO Niel Robertson, our VP of Product Management/Marketing Bill Quinn, our VP of Sales Bill Adkins, Account Manager Dan Tisser, Marketers Tara Hallam, Anna Sawyer and myself (Elaine Ellis). Come by to meet the faces behind Trada.
Our team plans on live blogging many of the sessions, so even if you can’t attend, you’ll at least be able to pick up some key sessions from the best search engine marketers in the world.
Also, our CEO Niel Robertson will be giving a theater presentation on Tuesday, Aug. 17th at 4:30 pm. His presentation will be on “Crowdsourcing: The Pros and Cons of Leveraging the Crowd for Paid Search.“
Trada is revolutionizing the way Agencies, Advertisers and PPC Experts build and manage PPC marketing campaigns. We've developed the first PPC marketplace that allows agencies and in-house advertisers to leverage the skills of hundreds of the best PPC experts in the world, who in turn earn money risk free by generating low cost clicks and conversions for advertisers.
Jeff Ma weaves his experience as a professional card counter and baseball statistician into great lessons on how to use statistics in business.
Take a look.
