April 2009 Posts from the Internet Marketing Blog
Aggressive Linking: How to Lower Bounce Rates and Raise Page Views with Inline Links
As a search marketer, one of my goals is to engage visitors and keep them engaged. I want searchers to find my sites, spend time reading content, click around, go deeper in the site, exhibit certain behaviors and convert.
Two key performance metrics I rely on to measure visitor engagement are bounce rates and page views. Having a site with a high bounce rate and a low page views indicates a negative user experience –a sign there’s something wrong with the website. Factors that contribute to high bouncing and low views range from poor content, to slow load times, to confusing site architecture, to a lack of proper visual cues.
Yet another culprit may be a shortage of inline links: in-sentence or in-paragraph, contextual hyperlinks.
In the next section, I’m going to discuss how aggressive internal linking can raise your visitor engagement.
... Click here to read full postLaunching a New Website? Query Analysis Can Make the Difference Between Thriving or Diving in the SERPs
One of the best ways to conduct keyword research is to explore your website’s data files. By looking at the search queries your visitors used to find your website, you discover new, proven keywords to optimize for.
But what if you're a brand new website with no search data and you want to target a new query space? How do you find the right keywords to build your list around?
For new websites, conducting a Competitive Query Analysis is very effective for researching keywords. Running queries for keywords you're thinking of targeting gives you a very good idea how competitive a particular query space is among marketers. You also find out how high the interest level is for a particular query among searchers.
With the results of your query research, you can chart a more informed keyword strategy for your new website.
... Click here to read full postIt's Friday! Quality Score, Risks and Bob Dylan
Follow Friday: The Week in Search
As is always the case in search marketing, this week left no shortage of valuable content. Here's what we found most interesting.
... Click here to read full postHow to Use SEO & PPC Keyword Data to Maximum Effect
In the last installment of this keyword series, we talked about how sharing information between paid and natural search marketing campaigns could leverage shared data to improve the results of both channels. We used the following graphic to illustrate the process of sharing information amongst PPC and SEO campaigns:
The graphic above makes a lot of sense in the event that you’re:
- Launching a new site
- Launching a new product/product line/offering
- Attempting to target a new keyword vertical
This cross-channel thinking can certainly be applied by anyone engaging in search marketing, but for our purposes we’ll focus on the process surrounding any of the above.
... Click here to read full postThe Power of Data Sharing - How Sharing SEO & PPC Information Can Improve the Results Enjoyed By Both
Anyone engaging in search marketing should be analyzing SEO and PPC concurrently.
By creating a data-driven Web marketing environment in which you can share insights from multiple channels, you provide yourself with a marked advantage over companies and marketers who segment their information sets. This is particularly true within search marketing itself.
Because of the input required for success in the two disciplines, SEO and PPC search engine marketing are often managed separately by everything from pay-per-click tools to agencies to in-house search teams. The implementation of strategies really can require significantly different skill sets. But the DATA offers a very important commonality that should be exploited by anyone attempting to truly “optimize” for search engines.
... Click here to read full postIt's Friday! Lollipops, SEO & Twitter
Follow Friday: The Week in Search
What happened, what's about to happen, and what you need to know about the world of search engine marketing.
Before we get to it, we want to be clear that we did not create the idea of a Friday Roundup, but hey, imitation is the best form of flattery, right? Here are some Friday Roundups that we especially enjoy:
... Click here to read full postNew AdWords Interface - A Review of the New Search Query Report Feature
One of the things being shown off at SES New York a few weeks back was Google’s new AdWords interface. It’s currently in beta and is being rolled out to more and more customers. There have been a series of in-depth blog postings and discussions about the interface as a whole. The new is definitely a lot slicker than the old:
Versus…
The first is definitely prettier, and you can certainly make your way through the interface more swiftly. But what about new features?
The most interesting feature for a manufacturer of PPC management software that focuses on search query data was the new search query report.
... Click here to read full postStarting Another Graph: How to Expand Your Keyword List
NOTE: This is the second in a two-part series entitled Why the Most Efficient Frontier May Be New One: The Value of Keyword Discovery & Keyword Expansion.
In the last installment of our keyword discovery and keyword expansion how to, we talked about the value of “discovering new graphs” and explained that, in many cases, it’s better to expand your keyword portfolio to new keyword verticals:
... Click here to read full postWhy the Most Efficient Frontier May Be a New One - The Value of Keyword Discovery & Keyword Expansion
Continual keyword discovery in PPC search marketing is immensely important. There are actually a number of instances where strategically expanding your keyword portfolio offers more ROI than bid manipulation.
The concept of "diminishing returns" and modern portfolio theory is applicable to more than just economics. In a keyword portfolio, not unlike in a stock portfolio, there is a point in the optimization of a vertical when the work you put in and/or increased bidding will cease to yield the same (and often any) sort of return.
... Click here to read full postSEO Book SEO Community & Training Review
SEO Book offers an SEO Training program for 100 dollars a month that gets users access to:
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A series of Training Modules
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A Community Forum
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Various Coupons
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A Competitive Research Tool (a white-labeled version of SEM Rush).
I’ve been a member there for the last few months, and thought I’d share my thoughts about/experiences with the program.
Why I Like These Types of Programs
Two things you’ll find frustrating about trying to learn and gather information in any space are:
... Click here to read full post
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