BotSpider

PPC, The Site, and Flyin' Pigs

2006-01-20T09:33:00.000-05:00

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ads are a great way for small businesses to get instant recognition, and can be a good investment if monitored properly.

The key is "monitored properly".

As SEO Consultants, we understand that usability, functionality and spiderability are integral parts of any site. However, sometimes there are mitigating factors that require instant visibility (the site hasn't been spidered yet, special sales events, etc).

Putting up an account for PPC is relatively easy. It's really just a fill-in-the-blank scenario. Put money in the account, and you're off!

But what happens next?

Without proper monitoring of your account, the daily spend can get far out of control, especially if all you are looking at are clicks and not conversions.

A site owner once said he'd spend time on analysis of his PPC "when pigs fly". Taken aback, we asked why. Took more time than he had, he said.He figured all he had to do was replenish the account occasionally and he was fine--after all, he was getting a lot of clicks, right?

Well, yeah, he was. But his conversion, it turned out, was less than 1/2 of a percent. That's right--1/2 of a percent!

The account was taken over and the landing page was redesigned. The ads themselves were rewritten (he only had 1 ad, so more were added). By the end of a 3 month period, he was seeing conversion rates soaring into the 50-60% range. In addition, his click-through rate (CTR) also dramatically improved.

Our advice to the small businesses wanted to start a PPC campaign: Go for it--just don't forget to monitor your progress.

And watch out for those flyin' pigs.

Google's Packin'!

2006-01-09T09:28:00.000-05:00

You gotta love Google. They have come up with a pack that is downloadable and functional. The goodies range from the ever-cool Google Earth (hours of fun!), to Adobe Reader.

The spyware removal system is a must....not to mention the Norton Antivirus addtion. Keep in mind it's only set up for Windows XP for now (but since a majority of users have XP, it shouldn't be that much of a problem).

Computer savvy folks probably already have these applications on their systems, but it's going to come in handy for the regular users who want a bit more "bling" on their systems.

Milking It For All It's Worth!

2005-12-15T09:19:00.000-05:00

Jennifer Laycock, a well know search marketer, has been running an experiment entitled "Zero Dollars, a Little Talent and 30 Days". The premise is no budget, a lot of creativity, and see what happens.

Most site owners think they need very deep pockets to begin a business (we are excluding the brick-and-mortar store) online. Jennifer is proving this wrong.

Her idea for an online store was simple: clothing promoting breastfeeding. Now, breastfeeding isn't something new (aside from the recent backlash from certain people who believe it's "obscene" to do in public). Jennifer knew this, so she created a unique, catchy name for her business: The Lactivist.

Her catchy slogans on her breastfeeding shirts are downright hilarious, and are just edgy enough to get people talking about them (our personal favorite "Nip/Suck"). A viral marketer's dream!

We have kept up with her progress. Within 1 week her site was spidered and indexed, as was her blog (sandbox? aging delay? We think NOT!).

She has truly capitalized on viral marketing in the truest sense of the word. By utilizing her prominence within the breastfeeding mom's community, beginning a blog, adsense, Cafe Press, and a host of other free resources, she is actually pulling in a profit with no initial investment!

We applaud Jennifer not only for her activism in this particular sect (breastfeeding moms), but for the success of her newfound business. She has proven that diligence and creativity, not necessarily cash, is what makes a business work.

What is an Algorithm Anyway?

2005-12-08T09:32:00.000-05:00

The word "algorithm" is a staple to any good SEO's diet.

Simply put, an algorithm is a mathematical formula the search engines use to produce what (they hope) is the most relevant result for a search query.

Some analysts think you should design and optimize sites based on these different algorithms (each search engine has a different calculation). That'd be the obvious way to be at the top, right?

Well, not exactly.

The first and foremost goal of any site is visitors. If a site is built solely with the search engines in mind, can you imagine what it would actually look like to a human visitor? H1 tags everywhere. Keyword, keyword, keyword. Frankly, it'd be so unappealing no free-thinking person would actually want to stay.

We go into this because in the land of SEO, the process of making the site "optimized" sometimes is only considered "optimized for the search engines". Although making a site crawlable by the spiders is important, so is the usability factor for the humans who will (hopefully) interact with your site.

The algorithms are, for all intents and purposes, just guidelines. The exact formula for them isn't known, and a lot is just an educated guess.

That being said, trying to optimize according to each and every search engines' algorithms is not only a waste of time, but a pointless venture in and of itself.

Making the site acceptable for humans should be the focus (keeping in mind the site has to be spider-friendly also). It won't do much good for a high ranking site to be so completely user-unfriendly that there is no conversion at all.

Search engine spiders don't care about your product or service, but humans sure do.

What's a USP and Why Should You Care?

2005-12-06T08:36:00.000-05:00

Aaah, yes. The USP. Whenever we ask our clients-to-be what theirs is, we are almost always given a blank stare. "USP? What's that?"

A USP is, literally, your Unique Selling Proposition. It's what makes your site (and business) different from everyone else.

Think about it; the search engines are now boasting over 8 billion pages being indexed, how can you possibly stand out from the crowd?

Quite often, you will hear about "saturated markets". When that phrase is closely examined, what market isn't saturated these days? One would point to the obvious, such as "mortgages" and "diet pills". But guess what? Run a search for "underwater basket weaving" and you will receive about 124,000 results. It may not seem like much when compared to the results of the first two search terms, but it's still 124,000 results competing against each other.

That's where your USP can come into play. What makes your site (and business) different? Do you specialize somehow? Do you offer free lectures on your product/service? Does your site offer interactive elements to entertain or teach them something?

A few months ago, some SEO'ers here at BotSpider went on a hunt for jeans. You can think of the obvious searches here. In any event, without naming it, a site was found that allowed the potential customer to actually build a computer model of themselves and "try on" the jeans selected. You can imagine the fun being had with that (one can actually try on jeans after a weight loss or weight gain by changing the stats for the computer model).

The site was entertaining and informative, and most importantly, solved a big problem for online shoppers who can't actually try on the clothing before purchasing. This is a fabulous example of a USP working for them. Hundreds if not thousands of sites sell jeans--how many let you try them on online? Not too many, rest assured.

Finding what is special about you, your business and your site isn't difficult. You know your business and what sets it apart from the rest--just capitalize on it.

Your site, your business and your customers will thank you for it.

The Obvious Christmas Shopping Solution

2005-12-01T08:56:00.000-05:00

When was the last time you picked up the phone book to find the location of your favorite store? We are betting at least a year--if not more.

Shopping online is the single most convenient way to clear out all those purchases, and almost 80% of the population agrees. With gas prices still high (albeit better than 5 months ago!) and folks just being too busy to bother going to a brick-and-mortar, online stores will enjoy a good holiday season.

Demographics Revisited

2005-11-30T10:33:00.000-05:00

Previously we discussed how important demographic research is to reaching your target market. Being thrown into the mix are all the new services Google now offers (some paid, some free).

Now, demographically speaking, Google Search is still generally 18-34 tech guys. However, with the new services (think Google Maps), you can add a middle aged woman looking for a pediatrician's office, or Google Base to assist the 17 year old girl looking for a job.
Teenagers are becoming the most avid users of the internet, so let's toss Google Groups into the mix.

With these paid and free applications, the demographics of Google will soon lose their cohesiveness, and ultimately be an open spectrum of searchers that will give small businesses a bit of help with reaching their market, without breaking the bank.

It's All in the Demographic, Dear

2005-11-28T11:45:00.000-05:00

Interesting posts going on at WebmasterWorld. Seems folks are a bit stumped by the "but we are number 2 for our search terms" yet, no clicks.

This is where demographics come in. How many people really understand their customers? Not too many, unfortunately. Most people want to be on Google because, well, they're Google. That would make sense, if your demographic audience was predominately 18-34 year old males who are interested in the tech stuff. Want MSN? Think above average income stay-at-home moms with buying power. AOL? Generally their audience is the older crowd, 44+.

When you market to your target audience correctly, your #2 ranking will pay off--just get to know your customers first.

They Got to Your Site;Now What?

2005-11-22T08:37:00.000-05:00

We have been reading Sherry Thurow for years. This latest article of hers is true-to-form and dead on.

Usability is very underrated. SEO, to a certain extent, is also underrated. The web is still new enough that site owners know they need usability and need SEO, but don't know enough about it to place the value these components really hold.

Look at it this way--if your site were completely search engine friendly yet a user couldn't figure out a way to get to the product/service being promoted, what's the point? Alternately, if you had terrific navigation, compelling copy and direct call-to-action but couldn't be found within the first 3 pages of your search terms, what good would that do?
SEO is more easily implemented during site construction, that's true. However, even if the site doesn't need a complete overhaul, then the attributes discussed above should be the primary focus for the site to rank higher.

And that's where the value is.

Google's Got Your Number

2005-11-21T10:10:00.000-05:00

Well, apparently the number is 234,725. Apparently that's the last known account set up available for Google Analytics.
Seems the cattle call they encouraged for sign ups went a bit haywire, and the system isn't capable of handling all the accounts.

Finally, The Google Patent

2005-11-18T08:24:00.000-05:00

We get asked quite often what Google's algorithm is. "Don't you know? You are the SEO Consultants, right?"

We like to think so, yes.

But given the new patent (and this one's put in layman's terms, aggregated from hundreds of pages of legalese), there's a lot more to the algorithms than people realize.

Basically, Google wants to know how upstanding your site is. They also want to know if other people think your site is upstanding, to the point that not only do they visit, they download and link to you.

This is probably the easiest read of the patent we've found. It's pretty basic, and gives a lot of room for discussion as to the semantics of the whole thing, but we believe it to be all-encompassing insofar an idea of what Google wants to see.

Blogosphere 1 Blogger 0

2005-11-17T14:03:00.000-05:00

Comment spam in blogs has been a problem for a while now. Today a blogger laments the banning of his site in Google for inadvertantly spamming the blogosphere with automated comments. Apparently what was just a really bad attempt at link building has turned into his site going the way of the dodo bird. Unfortunately the only way to get links is the old fashioned way: one by one.

On the topic of spam, Danny Sullivan recently posted in his blog regarding "Black Hat SEO's" going legit due to the increasing challenges to spamming the engines (the algorithm noose seems to be tightening). Seems we now have "Grey Hat SEO"--not spam per se, but those that go up to the line of it. Remains to be seen how that one plays out. Frankly, the opinion here is you either spam or you don't; where's the grey in that?