Pulling Levers Blog
Archive for the ‘Search Engine Marketing’ Category
Stop the Roadblock: Corporate Linking Policies
Posted by Jamie Watanabe on July 25, 2008 within Search Engine Marketing. | No Comments
One of the basics of Search Engine Optimization is builidng links to your web site. The more reputable links seen by the search engines can correlate to a higher ranking. Yes, there are things to consider when evaluating a link exchange request; relevancy, the reputation of the other web site, etc. But, when your customers, users, or re-sellers want to simply place a link to your web site from their own web site, and they are not asking for a recipricol link, why are so many major corporations still requiring “permission” to do so?
Walk the Line: Building Stickiness Mixed with a Subtle Sales Pitch
Posted by Lever Interactive on July 10, 2008 within Search Engine Marketing, Social Marketing, Web Site Optimization. | No Comments
Stickiness is anything about a web site that encourages a user to visit often and stay longer. Stickiness examples are:
- Content that is updated frequently and provides ongoing assistance or relevancy to the user (e.g. tips, blog entries)
- User ability to personalize the site to suite their needs (e.g. iGoogle, My Yahoo)
- Online communities/forums
- User feedback (e.g. product reviews, ratings, surveys)
July 4th Weekend Clearance Sales, Is Your Paid Search Up-to-Date?
Posted by James McGinn on July 3, 2008 within Search Engine Marketing. | No Comments
Isn’t it amazing that we are already at the July 4th holiday? Where does the time go? Probably spent getting ready for your July 4th holiday weekend clearance sale, right? In your preparation, did you update your paid search campaign to target “sale” keywords, or write new ad text highlighting your sale?
It is a common mistake among online retailers. You placed a huge message advertising the sale on your home page, key landing pages and your order confirmation page. You sent out a special sale message to your email marketing campaign list. However, you forget to update your paid search to let the rest of the online world know you are having a sale.
Amazon.com is down! Search marketing campaigns still up :( June 6, 2008 1:00pm CST
Posted by Danyl Herron on June 6, 2008 within Search Engine Marketing. | 1 Comment
About 1pm CST I was looking to shop the World’s Largest Store…and found Amazon.com down. Still down at 1:13pm.
Broken Landing Pages Cost You Money with Adwords
Posted by Lever Interactive on April 11, 2008 within Google Adwords, Search Engine Marketing. | No Comments
When you first launch a campaign in Adwords, there is a process (automated) whereby Google checks to make sure the destination URL of each ad/keyword is a functioning page (i.e. no 404 or download). Once this occurs, the ads run and you start raking in the cash.
What we have found is that if that page eventually breaks (and they do, many times when adding additional tracking parameters), Google will not necessarily be aware that the ad is going to a non-functioning page. So, your campaign may be driving costly clicks to pages that don’t exist or call your 404 page (another reason to customize that 404). This can be a major issue with online retailers who have thousands of products and are leveraging product pages as landing pages. A product is no longer listed or pulled due to lack of inventory and, without the proper notification to marketing, clicks come…budget spent…un-smiley faces.
Making the Call – Attributing phone sales to paid search
Posted by Jamie Watanabe on October 1, 2007 within Search Engine Marketing. | No Comments
One of the more difficult measurements for online marketers is the contribution of online campaigns to phone sales. Often times retailers promote considered purchases, with consumers needing the security of talking to a “live” person before purchasing. In the case of service organizations or B2B companies, the phone is the easiest and often the only/best way to complete a sale. Yet, with the performance-based nature of search marketing, paid search return is often only calculated on transactions that can be directly derived from that transaction occurring on the site (i.e. customer conducts and completes a sale online). What is often ignored is how search plays into driving inbound sales calls. Even though the transaction is ultimately closed offline, it may have started with a click on a search ad. These sales (or at least a portion of) should be attributed paid search.