SEO - PPC - Webdesign - Ten Thousand Things

We all know social media is powerful - But how powerful? We want to find out so we have set up a test. This test involves making a video offering $100 to a random stranger pulled from a random social media profile. The catch? We aren’t going to tell him… You are.

We want everyone who reads this blog post or watches the video to go out and tell everyone about it by getting on your social profiles and spreading the word. We want to give this guy $100… All he has to do is friend me, Dave Winget - on facebook to verify that he read this blog post/saw the video about him.

Well, what are you waiting for guys? Do you want to help him out or not? I’m sure he’ll thank you for it

Be sure to tell all your friends about checking out the video at http://www.youtube.com/10kthings

If you do submit this video or post to any social media sites be sure to leave a link in the comments so other people can continue it.

Second tier search engines are commonly defined as any search engine that draws less than 10% of the search traffic. I define second tier search engines as search engines other than Google, Yahoo and MSN. Even though they are such a small part of the entire search volume they still can be a useful tool when running your PPC campaign. Here are some of my tips that I can suggest to use the second tier:

Test, test and then test some more- I can not stress this enough, take a small sample of campaigns and ad groups that work on the big three and try them out on the 2^nd tier network. Run them for a week, if you get bad traffic (clicks with only one page view) yank the campaign. If you measure online success through a conversion metric (online sales, phone call, or other desired behavior) track your cost per conversion (amount spent divided by the number of conversion) and will determine the worth of the traffic. There are a lot of second tier engines out there, don’t be afraid to pull the entire PPC spend from that engine if you are not getting the desired results.

Develop relationships with your account reps- Just how we manage relationships with our clients we do the same with all of our search engine account reps. I have found that there is a lot more negotiation that can take place in regards to refunds, billing and account maintenance. Almost all second tier search engines will accept Adwords Editor .csv files for bulk upload. Their willingness to create your campaigns for you is based on the relationship and how much you spend with them! Work with the people you like, don’t work with pushy reps that align their sales strategies with used car salesmen.

Spend as little time as possible working on 2^nd Tier Campaigns- The second tier will almost never deliver the quality of traffic that the big three does, so don’t expect to find a second Google. Second tier engines should only be used to supplement your first tier traffic, quite honestly a lot of time on the second tier is a waste. Spend the majority of your time working with the first tier engines, it will always payoff more.

The second tier search engines often go ignored, however, to maximize your performance they can be a great asset in your PPC tool box.

One thing that I tell everyone to do is start a blog. Blogging can bring in traffic for keywords you plan for (both long and short tail) and you will also see traffic from some keywords you never thought of – even after all the research, all the analysis, all the everything you thought about before you started your website.

Companies especially can benefit from blogging. They can write about new upcoming products, company life, fun things that happened at the company, new hires, case studies… the list goes on and on. Everything under the sun can be part of a company blog. The only hard part about it is getting your employees ramped up and excited about the company blog.

Something that is asked of me over and over is “Who’s going to blog? How do we get them to blog? Do we have to hire someone special?” No you don’t have to hire anyone special to blog… sure you could and there are a lot of great jobs out there for bloggers and a lot of great writers looking for them.

The people who will write blog posts for you, however, you already pay – they are the ones that are excited (if you’re a good manager) about your company and what is going on.

How to get them excited to blog? My favorite way to do this is to allow time for them to write blog posts and then reward your employees for blogging and/or make it competitive. Contests like “whoever brings the most page-views or comments in a month gets X” where X=something good and not something like a 10$ Starbucks gift card… (sweet 2 cups of coffee for 30 blog posts woooo) No matter what you reward them with it will be cheaper than hiring a blogger and if the reward is good enough it will keep them excited about blogging.

You can moderate blog posts as you see fit. If you trust your employees not to write trade secrets I suggest letting them run with it. Give them each their own login names so when they do post it says right at the top who wrote what (this will also start to rank for their names – another reason they want to keep their writing at a high standard.)

Blogging IS the best way to open up to your customers and the first step into becoming involved with social media. The benefits of being open with the people who buy your products/use your service are many. You put a human face on your company while at the same time getting feedback from your target market. With blogging there is really nothing to lose and only traffic and new ideas from consumers to gain.

I say kinda, because PPC should be the last part of anyone’s online strategy. The goal of pay per click is to get users to your website with proper key word selection and compelling ad copy. I have always told clients that the goal of PPC is to get people to the party; it’s not up to PPC that makes them stay. That is the responsibility of good design and proper search engine optimization. Let me explain how this all works.

Good design is, well, good design. This means that a site is easy to navigate, with relevant and congruent content that makes users view multiple pages, spend more time on the site, and hopefully produce the desired out come (a conversion metric such as - a purchase, phone call, leaving a comment, etc) while differentiating its self from the competition, if necessary.

Well executed search engine optimization will ensure proper messaging when being indexed by search engines. This means that the messaging of the site (a product of good design) will match how the site is read by the search engines and then ranked in order by keywords. Once design and SEO is in place only then should proper Pay Per Click advertising tactics should be used.

When all three elements come together this is what a search experience should look like:

1. An internet user types in a the keyword that is targeted by both PPC and SEO
2. The ranking of the site appears in both the organic and paid search listings of the search results page, thus increasing the chance of a click through.
3. With good design, the user finds what they are looking for and a conversion metric is triggered
4. Search engines reward the PPC advertiser because the high relevancy with lower cost per click and higher ranking

PPC rocks but it isn’t the end-all be-all that so many people incorrectly believe it to be. SEO, design AND PPC are all required for the most effective online branding strategy.

A friend asked recently “If no one, outside of Google developers, know how the search engine indexes and ranks websites why do so many people give so much money to have their sites optimized?” No sooner had this left my friends lips did I say: “Because we do know.”

I then went on to explain that while we don’t have access to the code that makes the crawlers work – we still know how to work with and around the system.  We know these things through testing and thanks to the free exchange of theories and experiment results from people across the world – we know what works and what doesn’t.

Being able to have an open dialog and discuss SEO with thousands of other people who have a very vested interest in SEO and search marketing is an incredible thing.  With this open discussion and rapid advancement of SEO it has caused something, perhaps, unexpected.

As SEO’s get better at what they do, by being able to communicate in such an advanced way, so too does the mighty Google get better at thwarting their efforts.  Each advances the other as quickly as they advance themselves.

It is social media that has allowed SEO professionals to take their game to the next level and keep ahead of the constantly changing Google landscape.  Without being able to go to sites like Sphinn and find the latest news, developments and ideas about search - SEO would be a much more difficult thing.  Only those within the most trusted of networks would know what worked and what didn’t and because of this Google would likely not be where it is today.

Communication is key but it is also a double-edged sword.  Speaking freely with each other is what makes us better at getting our sites ranked and it is that same free speaking that lets Google know where it needs to tighten its defenses… and so the cycle continues.

When you’re just starting out in the pay-per-click (PPC) arena there are some very important terms you need to know and understand. Since we are going to be talking about these terms a lot in more advanced PPC posts in the future we thought it would be a good idea to write a referance that we will be able to link back to to help those who may not be as search savvy.

The following are the basic terms that are used every day in the PPC world:

Impression- When an ad displays on a search engine results page, but the advertiser does not click on the ad that would link off the results page.

Clicks- Well, a click is a click. Please don’t use the term, “hit” that is so 1998

Click Through Rate- The number of clicks divided by the number of impressions will result in the Click Through Rate also know as the CTR

Cost Per Click- The amount search engines charge for a click off the results page and onto the Landing Page. Cost per click is set at the Keyword level and is often referred to as CPC.

Keyword- What is typed into the search query and what is search marketers bid on in PPC buying interface such as Google’s Adwords

Quality Score- A system used by Google to help determine the price of keywords. Google will reward advertisers with lower a CPC and higher position on a results page when Keywords have high a CTR and strong relevancy to the search query.

Landing Page- Where advertisers decide to send traffic when a user clicks on an ad. The landing page does not have to be the home page.

Pay Per Click or PPC is a type of search marketing where advertisers pay every time their ad is clicked by an internet user. Users will see PPC ads on every search engine results page, often across the top or the right column. All of this space is up for grabs by bidding on what people type into the search engine also known as Keywords. At first glance PPC advertising seems extremely simple, and at first glance, it is. All of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) allow anyone to sign up for accounts and bid and buy keywords.

Several of our clients, at one time managed their own PPC accounts but turned them over to us because when you get into it the following concepts can be rather difficult to get right:

Bid Management: Knowing how much to buy keywords for, on what engines and when to run the ads.

Keyword Research: Which keywords to buy, which keywords trigger a success event, (for example someone buying a product on a website) and knowing which keywords to eliminate.

Copy Writing: What do you write in your ads? Often there very tight limitations to what an advertiser can write. Google limits its ads to 95 characters including spaces; also there are strict limitations on what can be said, also know as editorial guidelines.

This is just scratching the surface of what PPC is and what it takes to run an effective campaign. The internet is a living, breathing, thing and PPC campaigns need to be constantly adjusted, tested, and optimized to get the highest return.

Starting a company and taking on nearly more work than you can handle is, to say the least, time consuming. Combine that with a full time (40 hour+) job and you end up with a problem – you’re working constantly.

We here at 10kThings (I say that like we are more than 4 people) are all feeling the strain, some more than others. We are on the cusp of being able to quit our “real” jobs (if we wanted to) and report to no one but ourselves. This, however, will only lead to more work (and stress) as we will have time to take on more clients and actively go after accounts we want.

It is a very exciting time right now but the problem is we are always working. Since we are all good friends even when we’re just hanging out at the bar we are discussing work. We have to find a balance but where do you draw the line?

The problem when you are working for yourself is knowing when you should take a break. Obviously the goal is to make as much money as possible and so when your office is literally your home - when do you say enough is enough and take a break?

There are no “weekends” or “holidays” when you are just starting to grow your business. You started your company (or freelance lifestyle) because you love what you do and part of you knew that you would never get rich working for someone else.

That paycheck isn’t going to be the same every two weeks – with every bit of work that you put in, with every client you sign - that paycheck is going to go up if you work hard and down if you don’t. Because of this you have that drive to work constantly – to bring in enough money to be secure with not knowing if next month will be as profitable - to achieve your dream that made you start your own business in the first place.

Our dream is financial security, running a company and not being employees of someone else - not being told where to be for 8 hours a day – freedom. In the pursuit of this dream we are going to work harder than we ever have but we can come out of it with having actually accomplished something.

When so much is on the line taking a break from it all, and letting yourself relax, is hard to do but is necessary. Without it you will burn yourself out, begin to hate what you once loved, and maybe, cause you to give up on your dreams all together.

Thanks to everyone who is stopping by. We are currently so swamped with clients that we have no time to work on our own site. IT’S GREAT!!! Especially since we have only just started and became an official LLC about two weeks ago.

Be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed so you’ll know when we officially launch - we’ll also be writing up some interesting articles about SEO, PPC and web design so be sure to check in often

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