Thursday, January 19th, 2012

Search, Plus Your World and the Power of the Google+ Outlier

Change occurs at a frantic pace in digital marketing, and I love that about the industry. It definitely keeps you on your toes. There are times that small changes occur, and you can barely notice the changes. And then there are times that major shifts occur. Shifts that drastically change how companies need to think about marketing. This month, one of those major shifts occurred in Search, and as you can guess, Google drove the change.

On January 10th, Google announced Search, Plus Your World, which in certain cases, drastically impacts the search results for users. Search, Plus Your World is Google’s big push to tie Search with Social (using Google+ as its foundation). Google+ is growing rapidly, and based on the impact that Search, Plus Your World can have, it’s only going to keep on growing.

What is Search, Plus Your World?
With Search, Plus Your World, the search results are being tailored by your social connections (and weighted heavily by Google+). Personalized results can contain user profiles, posts, shares, images, related people and pages, etc. from your social connections, along with standard search results (the results you have been seeing for some time).

Google now presents a toggle so users can switch between personalized results and search listings without personalized results. In addition, there is an option at the top of the screen showing you how many personalized results are possible (based on your connections in Google+). Clicking this link is a “pure” personalized experience, showing you a full listing of personalized results. And last but not least, autocomplete can now contain user profiles (when you search for people). Talk about having an impact on online reputation management. Thumbnail images showing up in autocomplete is darn powerful. Note, personalized results contain a small blue icon next to the them (shaped like a person).

For example, here are the personalized search results for “android smartphones” when I’m logged in:
Click the image to view a larger version.

And here are the un-personalized results:
Click the image to view a larger version.

And here are the “pure” personalized results (by clicking the link at the top of the search results):
Click the image to view a larger version.

Yes, there’s a big difference between the three screenshots, especially the pure personalized results. Note, the default view is personalized (the first screenshot). Then you can toggle between un-personalized and personalized by clicking the icons in the upper right-hand corner. The pure personalized results can be accessed by clicking the link above the search results (which shows thumbnails of your connections next to the link). See below:

The Search Plus Your World Toggle Buttons:

Your Google+ Perspective Means Everything
As I’ve been reading numerous blog posts about Search, Plus Your World, I think one point is getting lost. What you see in the search results is your own view, based on your own social connections. That view completely depends on the number of people you have in your circles, and what they are sharing. If someone has 1000 people in their circles, they are more apt to see personalized results for a number of topics than someone that has 50 people in their circles. That said, if you are in someone’s circles that doesn’t have a lot of connections already, then you have a strong chance of showing up for searches focused on your niche, location, etc. I cover this in more detail below.

Although Google+ is growing rapidly, it still hasn’t reached the number of users that some other popular social networks have. The fact of the matter is that there are still a lot of people not using Google+, or not using it regularly. Connecting with these outliers when they join Google+ presents a strong opportunity for current users of Google+ to influence their search rankings. For example, if you are brand, business owner, etc., you have a chance of directly influencing their search results if you become one of their connections. And when I say “influence” their search results, I’m not kidding. Read on.

The Power of The Google+ Outlier
After Search, Plus Your World launched, I received a very interesting email from someone that had added me to their circles. She was new to Google+ and didn’t have many people in her circles. And from what I can gather, I was the most active out of them all. This once Google+ outlier couldn’t help but view a boatload of information from me when she searched Google. Search results-wise, it wasn’t “Search, Plus Your World”, it was more like “Search, Plus Glenn’s World”. And that presents a huge opportunity for businesses looking to get noticed in Search.

When searching for anything related to technology, marketing, advertising, mobile, social, etc., I was there. The standard personalized results had several listings from my activity on Google+. That’s great, but it got even deeper when she clicked on the “pure” personalized results. When clicking the link to view all the personalized results, I was in almost every single listing. That’s incredibly powerful, and could very well be happening to a lot of people new to Google+. You can see a few examples below.

Outlier Example 1: Example of personalized results for “Google Analytics”:
Click the image to view a larger version.

Outlier Example 1a: Example of pure personalized results for “Google Analytics”:
Click the image to view a larger version.

Let’s try a search for a location:
Outlier Example 2: Example of personalized results for “Princeton, NJ”:
Click the image to view a larger version.

Outlier Example 2a: Example of pure personalized results for “Princeton, NJ”:
Click the image to view a larger version.

After reviewing the screenshots above, you can see that I was listed several times in the personalized results, but also dominated the pure personalized results. Google may adjust the level of personalization in the future (as they test this out), but for now it’s heavily weighted by your Google+ connections.

Key Points To Consider:

There are many Google+ outliers now. You should think about the best ways to get in their circles (especially when they first make the move to G+.)
Keep sharing high quality content about your given industry, niche, etc. The more you share on Google+, the more opportunity you have for showing up in someone’s personalized listings. And for outliers that make the move, you might be able to dominate the results.
The sharing effect with outliers won’t be strong (at least on Google+). That said, they might be heavily using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Additional shares might come, but those shares might come via Facebook, Twitter, etc. You can always use Google Ripples to analyze content you are sharing on Google+.
Don’t overlook people that are new to Google+. Who cares if they only have a few connections. You can be one of them, and then show up when they search (a lot).

Summary – Entering “Their World”
If you have been sitting on the sidelines with Google+ (as an outlier), now is the time to jump in. It’s going to be incredibly important for you, your business, your influence, and your rankings. In addition, if you are already on Google+, don’t overlook the outliers that will soon join Google+. Search, Plus Your World provides an unprecedented opportunity to rank for extremely targeted queries. The opportunity cost of sitting on the sidelines is enormous. So start today.

And oh yeah, don’t forget to add me to your circles. :)

Posted by Glenn Gabe @ 10:25 am in google, google-plus, SEO, social-media

2 Comments »

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

How To Reveal SEO Problems by Running a Test Crawl Using Xenu Link Sleuth

How to use Xenu Link Sleuth to reveal SEO problems.

SEO Technical Audits are an important service I offer at G-Squared Interactive. I typically start SEO engagements by performing a thorough audit of a web site, which often uncovers nasty gremlins that could be hurting a company’s SEO efforts. When writing about technical audits, I often receive many questions about the tools I use to analyze websites. Unfortunately, there’s not one specific tool that does the job. It takes several tools, each with a specific function. This toolset combined with human SEO intelligence provides a powerful combination that can identify both simple and complex SEO issues.

The Test Crawl
As part of auditing a web site, I always run a test crawl. Spidering a web site can provide a deeper look into how a crawler accesses content on a web site, the links it follows, the problems it encounters, etc. There are several tools you can use crawl a web site, but this post focuses on Xenu Link Sleuth. Xenu is a tool I have been using for a long time. It’s relatively easy to use, it provides a wealth of information for webmasters, and it’s free.

After crawling a web site, Xenu returns important information to webmasters, including response codes, server errors, 404’s, internal links, external links, page titles and descriptions, etc. You never know what you are going find when unleashing Xenu on your site. And the best part of running a test crawl is that the data is actionable. You can work with your development team and make changes based on your findings. And some of those changes can be implemented relatively quickly.

Hidden SEO Dangers
There are many issues that can be found during a test crawl, and each of the issues could be causing serious harm to your SEO efforts. In order to demonstrate some of the problems you can uncover using a tool like Xenu, I wrote a blog post for Search Engine Journal covering three of those issues. In my post, I cover how you can find server errors, 404’s, and strange (and potentially dangerous) outbound links. By revealing these issues during a test crawl, you can quickly take action with the help of your development team.

Finding Server Errors During a Test Crawl:
Server Errors found during a test crawl.

So, if you’re interested in learning more about the dangers that can be uncovered by crawling a web site, don’t hesitate, head over to Search Engine Journal now. As I mentioned earlier, you never know what you are going to find.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/three-ways-a-test-crawl-could-uncover-hidden-seo-dangers/38637/

Posted by Glenn Gabe @ 10:27 am in bing, google, SEO

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Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

How to Target Employees of Specific Companies via Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Ads

I was part of a strategy meeting recently and came across an interesting scenario. The group in question wanted to get in front of several specific companies with a targeted message. To clarify, they didn’t want to target a category or a set of keywords, but instead wanted to get in front of employees of specific companies in a certain market. As several people started brainstorming ideas for how to accomplish this, I quietly opened two new tabs on my laptop.

As various ideas were being thrown around (several of which would probably fail), I turned my laptop around and then got everyone’s attention. The two tabs contained the landing pages for Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Ads. Some people were confused by what I was showing them, since they never thought of how both Facebook and LinkedIn advertising could be a solution for this type of campaign. But as I explained the various targeting options available, they quickly understood the potential impact.

Facebook and LinkedIn Company Targeting
I know many marketers have written off social advertising, but the user data that both Facebook and LinkedIn hold enables advertisers to precisely target various demographics and interests. This can be incredibly powerful (when campaigns are set up and managed properly).

As part of both Facebook and LinkedIn’s targeting options, marketers can target audiences by workplace or company. In addition, you can use workplace targeting in conjunction with other targeting options like interests and geographic targeting. This can get your message in front of employees of specific companies that are interested in certain topics, and that live in certain areas. This can be done quickly and with granular precision. Again, this can be extremely powerful. When I explained the possibilities during the meeting I mentioned earlier, the group immediately became excited. We brainstormed several campaigns in a short period of time.

Why Would You Target a Specific Company?
Some of you might be wondering why you would want to target a specific company. Well, there are several situations where targeting a company could be viable. If your focus is B2B, you might have a short list of the top companies you want to target. If you’re a sales rep, you might have certain organizations on your radar. If you’re a job seeker, there might be a list of companies you would love to work for. So on and so forth.

Targeted Ad Creative For Targeted Companies
Let’s say you run a company that has developed a product for high tech companies. You have sales reps in each region of the United States and want to get both your product and your salespeople in front of employees from various companies you have identified as strong leads. As part of your strategy, you decide to utilize Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Ads. By setting up campaigns targeting specific companies, along with regions, you can craft your ads and landing pages to be extremely relevant and targeted. For example, the images and ad copy you develop could specifically speak to people from a certain company. Remember, specific ad copy beats general, per a recent post of mine.

In addition, you can drive users to landing pages that are targeted for both the company and the region. You can include specific salesperson information and contact information right on that page (knowing the salesperson that would work with the company at hand). This is just a quick example, but I think it begins to show you the power of Social Data.

How To Target Companies via Facebook Ads
I won’t go through the entire process of creating campaigns in Facebook, but I wanted to include how to select companies within the targeting tool. You would start by creating a campaign for a company and the location you want to target (you don’t want to mix targeting within the campaign, so keep this campaign focused on a company/region combination.)

As part of the targeting options available, scroll down to “Workplace” and start typing the company you want to target. For example, if you start typing “Apple”, you should see the company show up. Select it and check the estimated reach (on the right). I see 37,120 people in the United States.

Remember, you can combine this with location or interests to target employees of a company that are in a specific location, and are interested in certain topics. In addition, you can target job titles by interest. Then you can get in front of specific roles within an organization. I won’t cover those options here, but it’s entirely possible. Also, remember to tailor your ad creative and landing page, based on this targeting (as mentioned earlier).

How To Target Companies in LinkedIn Ads
Let’s see what the setup looks like in LinkedIn. Again, I won’t go through every step of setting up a campaign. When selecting your targeting options, head down to “Company” and start typing the company name. Similar to what we accomplished above in Facebook, start typing “Apple” and select the company name when it shows up in the list. I see over 25,000 LinkedIn members that work for Apple.

Just like with Facebook, you can choose a combination of targeting methods to hone your audience. For example, you can select a location, gender, groups they belong to, their job titles, etc. The sky’s the limit. And remember, make sure you tailor your ad creative and landing pages knowing that specific companies will be viewing your ads. And if you’ve selected additional criteria, you might know they are from certain areas and have certain interests.

Summary – The Power of Targeting via Social Data
I hope you see the enormous potential here and you are excited to brainstorm various campaigns. If you are interested in targeting employees of specific companies, then don’t overlook social advertising. Both Facebook and LinkedIn offer some incredible targeting that SEM can’t offer (at least for now). And if you’re looking for a job, be proactive. If you spend a little money targeting certain companies, you never know which employees you can get in front of. Maybe even your future manager. :)

Posted by Glenn Gabe @ 8:39 am in facebook, linkedin, social-advertising

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Thursday, December 29th, 2011

How To Use The Contextual Targeting Tool to Estimate CPC and Budget for Google Display Network Campaigns [Video]

When most people think of running AdWords campaigns, they immediately think of ads running on Google.com. Many don’t realize that you can target audiences outside of Google.com with both text ads and display advertising. The ads will run across Google’s Display Network, which includes any website running Google Ads. Note, this also includes Google properties like Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, etc. It can be extremely powerful when set up and managed correctly.

Although there are several different ways to target audiences across the Display Network, setting up targeted themes is often a strong way to go. That’s where you set up ad groups targeting a tight set of keywords, which Google can use to understand the content you want your ads to match up with. For example, if you want your ads to show up on hdtv review sites, you would create an ad group that includes a tight set of keywords around the topic “hdtv reviews”.

That’s great, but how do you estimate the cost per click (CPC) and budget for Display Network campaigns? Is it even possible to gauge CPC’s for various themes you are targeting? Yes, you can do this, and I’m going to show you how to do it today. I’ve created a five minute video below that walks you through how to use the contextual targeting tool in AdWords to find estimated CPC’s by theme. Check out the video below to learn more.

Video Transcription:
Hello, everybody. This is Glenn Gabe from G-Squared Interactive. I just wanted to take you through a quick video tutorial today. What I’m actually going to go through is the contextual targeting tool and how to estimate CPCs and budget based on the themes that you set up. For those of you that aren’t familiar, the Display Network enables you to target an audience outside of Google.com. It could be extremely powerful, but you do need to understand what a rough CPC and what the rough budget will be. That’s what we’re going to go through today.

There are various ways to target an audience across the Google Display Network, but the way that we’re going to work through today is by targeting themes, very tight themes that Google will interpret and then provide your ads against targeted content. It’s contextual advertising.

In order to get started, what you’re going to do is log in to your AdWords account. You’ll probably be under your Campaigns tab. What I want you to do is actually go to Tools and Analysis, it’s a tab up top, click the dropdown, and then click Contextual Targeting Tool. That will take you to this screen right here.

The first thing we’re going to do is actually map out some themes for a specific category. So it’s that time of year. It’s the holidays. A lot of people are buying electronics and TVs. So let’s use HDTVs as a test for us. What I want you to do is go up into the search box and actually type “HDTV” and then hit Search. What Google is presenting now are themes based on HDTVs. You have about five or six different suggested ad groups with about five to seven different keywords in there. Again, very tight themes.

What this is going to tell Google, if you choose a specific “suggested ad group”, which you won’t for every one, I mean, some of these are not going to be targeted, like “HDTV antenna” probably isn’t one that you’re going to run, but for the ones that you’re going to run, you’re telling Google to present your ads against content that is relevant to the specific themes. And that could be very, very powerful if used properly.

What’s worth noting here is that if you go to the far right, you’ll see Suggested Bid based on the ad groups that are suggested here. Suggested Bid is based on historically competitive bids on the sites that are relevant to the keywords you entered. So Google is taking a look at what bids were on sites that matched these themes and giving you an estimated CPC.

Moving back to the left here, you’ll see two icons for each of these suggested ad groups. One is a plus symbol, another is an ellipsis. If they’re grayed out, you cannot drill into them. If they are active, you obviously can. The ellipsis represents predicted placements. These are websites that Google is saying that your ads can show up on based on the themes that you’ve set up. If you click the ellipsis, you are actually going to see all of those websites, and more importantly, you are going to see an estimated CPC like we saw before. So this is a bid suggestion, which you can use to estimate clicks, costs, obviously clicks times estimated CPC. You can start to back out conversion numbers. It’s just a great place to start based on the themes that you’re creating.

So that’s predicted placements. Let’s pop back to the results here. We clicked the ellipsis before. Now what I’m going to do is click the plus sign. Again, it needs to be active. If it’s grayed out, you cannot drill into it. Let’s go into HDTV deals. If we click the plus icon, what you’re actually going to see are more themes based on HDTV deals. So now you’re going deeper into the themes, sub-themes within HDTV deals. This is something that you definitely would want to do if you’re researching this for a specific project.

Back to our CPCs for a minute. If you go to the right here, you’ll actually see again suggested bid. Again, this is based on each of the historical bids that Google has found for each of the themes that you’ve created. Of course, like we did before, you could actually click the ellipsis icon to drill into predicted placements. You could click the plus sign to expand links to the websites so you could actually check those out. Again, you do have bid suggestions up top for estimating your CPC. This is the way that you would drill into specific themes, figure out estimated CPCs, and then start to gauge what your rough budget would look like.

This concludes the tutorial. I hope you feel more comfortable using the Contextual Targeting tool to estimate CPCs and budget. Again, it’s a great way to actually map this out and export it directly to your campaigns. So head over to my blog at GSQi.com, post a comment, ask questions. That’s totally fine, and you could email me directly from the blog as well. Good luck with the Google Display Network and happy bidding.

Posted by Glenn Gabe @ 8:02 am in adwords, google, SEM

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Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

Targeting Competitor Fans via Facebook Advertising: Legitimate Practice or Risky Business?

I’ve been launching more and more Facebook advertising for clients over the past few years. Although many marketers will be quick to say that Facebook Ads don’t produce the ROI that Search Marketing campaigns do, I don’t necessarily think that’s a fair comparison. Actually, I believe they can work together, and both can be powerful in their own ways. For example, Facebook provides powerful demographic and interest-based targeting that’s not available in SEM (for now anyway). Sure, you can target interests via The Google Display Network, but not to the level that Facebook provides.

Similar to SEM, upfront planning pays huge dividends. There’s a direct correlation between the amount of thought and research you put into your campaigns and the performance of those campaigns. For Facebook Ads, this comes down to your targeting, and the subsequent structure of your campaigns. While brainstorming various targeting options for clients, it’s amazing to see the audiences you can pinpoint via the “interests” available in Facebook.

For example, you have a wide range of demographic targeting options available to you, including age, location, gender, education, etc. In addition, you can target interests, which opens up a powerful mechanism for reaching an extremely targeted audience. For example, you can target men, aged 35-45, who live in New York City, who are college graduates, that are interested in football and beer. That’s pretty darn powerful.

An example of demographic and interest-based targeting in Facebook:

Targeting Facebook Fans
Considering the targeting options available to marketers in Facebook, it shouldn’t be surprising that questions quickly arise regarding competitors. For example, can a company target fans of a competitor’s Facebook page? And, can those competitors target your own fans? Does Facebook police this, or do they secretly want this to happen? These are all good questions, and it’s healthy for marketers to explore these topics in great detail.

To be clear, there’s no right or wrong answer with this subject. Some companies will go down one aggressive path, while other companies will avoid the strategy altogether. Let’s take a closer look at the situation below.

Precise Interest Targeting
When targeting interests in Facebook, you can use Broad Category Targeting or Precise Interest Targeting. When targeting precise interests, you can get extremely granular while building your audience. When you start searching for interests, Facebook populates the search box with various interests that match your keywords. For example, when I enter Samsung Tele…, you will see “Samsung Televisions” in the dropdown. The “Estimated Reach” box shows 130K people (in the United States).

Targeting people that have shown a precise interest in Samsung Televisions:

When you start entering keywords, interests that Facebook reveals that contain hash symbols (#) relate to anyone who has shown interest closely related to your keyword. Interests that show up without the hash tag are people that have expressed that specific interest (more targeted). Using the example above, you are targeting people that have liked Samsung Televisions since the hash tag is not present. Hypothetically, if you were a competitor of Samsung TV’s, you might choose to run aggressive advertising to their fan base in an attempt to get them to buy your own brand of HDTV. That’s how the battle begins…

For example, Samsung could turn around and target one of its competitors like Vizio:

The Ethical Problem
As you can imagine, this type of targeting brings up serious ethical questions. Although those fans might be an incredible target for a company, marketers needs to decide if that’s the type of advertising activity they want to be involved in. It’s similar to targeting competitor brand terms in SEM (yet even deeper). Note, I’m referring to running brand keywords only and not using competitor brand terms in your ads. There’s a difference.

As I explained earlier, there’s no right or wrong answer here. It completely depends on your company, your industry, and how your competition is playing the game. Are they targeting your fans? Are you losing customers to them? How does this come across to prospective customers? Will they know you are targeting them based on their “likes”? All of this needs to be weighed when deciding whether to run Facebook ads targeting competitor fans.

Facebook’s Stance
As of now, you can target competitor fans. Facebook lets companies do this without violating its advertising guidelines. Not only that, but Facebook can benefit greatly from competitor battles. As one competitor runs ads targeting another’s Facebook fans, the other company might retaliate. When they do, more ads are run, more money is spent, and Facebook generates more revenue. And the uglier the battle gets, the more money Facebook stands to make.

Therefore, I’m not sure this will change anytime soon. That’s unless Facebook is forced to change their policy (which could definitely happen). At that point, what gets changed, and what Facebook allows moving forward, is anyone’s best guess. This is just another reason to seriously analyze the situation before pulling the trigger on targeting a competitor’s fans. You might be within Facebook’s guidelines one day, and violating its terms the next. Welcome to digital marketing. :)

So, should you target competitor fans or not? As I explained earlier, it’s a tough question that needs to be analyzed on several levels. Therefore, to help you make an informed decision, I’ve provided several important points to consider below.

Points to Consider When Deciding Whether or Not To Target Competitor Fans with Facebook Advertising:
1. Weigh Risks and Benefits, Prepare for Possible Backlash
Don’t take this decision lightly. Depending on how aggressive you are, targeting competitor fans could cause serious backlash. Don’t simply implement a campaign that targets fans of competitor pages without walking through all the possible scenarios. For example, how will your competitors react, how will the audience react, how will your own fans react (if the story is surfaced) and what will your stance be if approached about the campaign?

Depending on the size of your company, I would make sure that you get several key people involved from Marketing, PR, Legal, etc. If you are a smaller company, then make sure others from your team are involved (both internal employees and important contractors like consultants or strategists from your agency). Walk through possible scenarios, the upside of targeting competitor fans, the downside, how you will respond, what happens if fans react negatively, what if your competitor goes public with their allegations, etc. Remember, there’s a difference between targeting an interest and targeting fans.

2. Don’t cross the line.
When setting up your ads, you need to decide how aggressive your creative will be. If you go too far, it can really anger your competitor(s), while also rubbing your audience the wrong way. For example, if you were targeting fans of a competitor, specifically targeting its weaknesses in your ads could be risky. You can also violate Facebook’s Advertising Guidelines by using competitor logos or misrepresenting a competitor.

Crossing the line could be perceived as sneaky and unprofessional. In addition to infuriating your competitors, their fans might not be thrilled either. Therefore, be careful with your ad creative.

3. Track and Analyze
This should go without saying, although I still see many companies not tracking their Facebook campaigns. If you decide to target fans of competitors, the performance of those campaigns will be the true test. If you map out a strong analytics strategy, you will know exactly how your campaigns are performing. Targeting competitor fans can be risky, so it’s important to know how well those campaigns are working. For example, tracking several conversion goals and events based on your specific business and website.

If you are driving visitors to an external URL (a landing page you control), then you should be looking at engagement levels, conversion, revenue, etc. For example, you might be utilizing a Facebook campaign to drive email signups, whitepaper downloads, ecommerce transactions, etc. Make sure you are tracking those goals on your site so you can analyze your Facebook campaigns based on performance. If not, you’ll see traffic and that’s pretty much it.

To Target or Not To Target… Facebook Fans
Facebook offers some incredible targeting options for marketers. Using a mixture of demographic targeting and interest-based targeting enables you to build powerful audience segments. Although that’s incredibly powerful, you can cross the line. Targeting competitor fans is a polarizing topic with no right or wrong answer. As I explained above, there are several key points to consider before pulling the trigger. And after analyzing the situation, you just might find that you never pull the trigger.

Posted by Glenn Gabe @ 10:06 am in facebook, SEM, social-media

3 Comments »

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

For Writing Effective SEM Copy, John Caples Was Right – Specific Beats General

How to write effective SEM copy.

Earlier in my career I read an advertising book that had a big impact on me. The book was Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples, who is one of the most famous copywriters in advertising history. Reading his book completely changed the way I thought about ad copy. I won’t go in depth on every aspect of the book, but it holds some incredible principles for writing effective copy. And for SEM, I use those principles on a daily basis.

One incredibly important point that Caples makes in the book is that when writing ad copy, be as specific as you can, and avoid generalities. This principle resonated with me immediately, and I have consistently used this strategy during my career. Actually, I use it on a daily basis while writing ads, speaking with clients, and speaking at meetings or conferences. Yes, I even use this principle outside of writing ad copy…

It’s a simple rule that can dramatically change how your ads perform (and impact how well your core points get communicated). Using this approach will enable you to write tight copy that punches benefits, screams facts, and helps you increase the performance of your campaigns. And who doesn’t want to do that?

Here is a snippet from the book:
"Make your copy specific. Anybody who works on tested advertising will tell you how important it is to be specific in your copy. {Using specific numbers and facts} tells the reader that a strict and accurate count has been made." Caples goes on to say that, "What you say is more important than how you say it." I couldn’t agree more, and my testing has proven this time and time again.

Why Being Specific Rules and Why Using Generalities Falls Short
It makes complete sense when you break it down. There are so many generalities used in advertising that specifics seem to connect with prospective customers. They pop off the page.

Compare the following two pieces of copy and tell me which one sounds more credible:
Thousands of people enjoy our service.

Find out why 6,745 people signed up for our service in the past 60 days.

The second line of copy clearly has an advantage. Telling someone the exact number of customers that signed up for the service is credible. Adding the timeframe also brings a level of credibility. The first line of copy is so general that it loses impact.

General Copy Can Easily Be Discounted By Prospective Customers:
Specific SEM copy is more credible.

This is exactly what John Caples was talking about. Build credibility by being as specific as possible and you can increase your response rate. In SEM, response rate translates to people clicking through to your landing page and converting. Although, I would argue that we are focusing on the first part of the handshake (the click-through). And without the click-through, you have no shot at conversion.

The Power of Testing in SEM
What I love about SEM (and digital marketing in general) is that you can split test copy relatively easily and quickly. In SEM, you can always test new ads against your control to see which one performs best. If you want to see the impact of specific copy, set up your test and fire away. Then you can base your strategies on hard data versus opinion.

SEM Enables You To Quickly and Easily Test Ad Creative:
Quickly and Easily Split Test Ad Creative in SEM

How Can You Be Specific in SEM Ad Copy?
In order to be specific, I recommend using facts, figures, sales numbers, percentages, sale prices, dollar amounts, etc. You need to break down the features and benefits of what you’re selling and then identify various statistics and facts that can be used in your copy. And this doesn’t just translate to numbers. You should be specific with location too. If you are close to a landmark, include that in your copy. And that’s especially the case when you are targeting mobile visitors in SEM. For example, "5 minutes from Nassau St. in Princeton" is better than "Close to Princeton."

Examples of Specific SEM Ad Copy
As many of you know, you are limited in SEM ads by character length (when running ads in Search). That said, you can still be specific with your ad copy. Let’s take a look at some examples across categories. Note, I’m not providing full SEM ads below (all lines of copy). I’ll just provide some quick examples of specific copy. It’s up to you how you craft your final ads. And again, I encourage you to test your ads to determine the best performing copy.

eCommerce: Tablet Computer for Kids
Over 1025 Games & Downloadable Apps
Just $100. Don’t spend $600 for a tablet!

B2B: Consulting Firm
74 years of combined experience.
Sign up now & access 375 reports.

Local Business: Restaurant
In business since 1943. Zagat-rated
367 Positive Reviews and Counting.

Electronics: LED HDTV
Sony 1080p LED HDTV. 60 inch screen.
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Coffee: K-Cups
100% Arabica Beans. 48 K-Cups for $32.
Free Shipping On All Orders.

Instructional Book (How-To)
218 pages of Computer Repair Training.
24,698 copies sold in 2011.

You get the picture. Although these examples aren’t lengthy, they still convey some powerful lines of ad copy. Being specific builds credibility and can get prospective customers noticing your ads, clicking through, and giving you a shot at converting them. On the flipside, if your ads are generic, bland, and lack specifics, they just might be overlooked. And if they are overlooked, your click-through rate drops, your Quality Score drops, and your CPC’s rise. And that’s all bad for SEM performance.

One Important Caveat – Be Realistic
One point John Caples makes is that your ad copy must be realistic. If you use specific ad copy, but it’s so far from reality, you can do more damage than just using general copy. For example, “25 million units sold in 48 hours!” That’s not very believable… I’m advocating being specific, but truthful. You should use real numbers, statistics, percentages, etc.

Summary – Be Specific, Forget Generalities
Put yourself in a prospective customer’s shoes and take a hard look at your ad copy. Would you jump to click through? If not, revamp your ad copy with specifics, and drop the generalities. As I explained earlier, the beautiful part about SEM is that you can easily split test ad copy. You just need to start.

In closing, I hope you found this post helpful. Now it’s time for me to analyze 47 holiday campaigns, including 769 ad groups, encompassing 328,456 keywords. How’s that for being specific? :)

Posted by Glenn Gabe @ 10:48 am in adCenter, adwords, bing, google, SEM

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Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

Can One Line of Code Kill Your SEO Performance? Yes, It Can. [Case Studies]

One Line of Code Could Kill SEO Performance

I perform a lot of SEO Audits at G-Squared Interactive. As I’ve written before on The Internet Marketing Driver, I believe audits are the most powerful deliverable in SEO. The reasons are simple. SEO Audits can be completed relatively quickly, they provide the strengths, weaknesses, risks, and opportunities for a website in a concise presentation, and produce a remediation plan that can form the SEO roadmap moving forward. In my opinion, audits provide the most bang for your SEO buck.

While performing audits, you never know what you are going to find. I’ve come across some crazy things when analyzing websites, from technical glitches to content optimization issues to sitemap flaws to spammy links. Being able to analyze, identify, and then fix nasty issues that are hurting a company’s SEO performance is powerful. You can often turn around the SEO performance of a website (and relatively quickly).

Two Types of Changes
Based on the audit results and the remediation plan, there are times that changes take months to implement, and then there are times that changes can be implemented very quickly (and sometimes within hours). My post today is focused on the second situation, where implementing quick changes can sometimes make a huge impact.

In SEO, technical barriers or limitations on a web site can cause serious problems. And those technical issues sometimes are caused by just one line of code. That might sound crazy, but it’s true.

Case Studies of How One Line of Code Was Destroying SEO
There were two recent audits I performed where one line of code was killing SEO performance. One situation involved the use of the meta robots tag, while the second situation involved the incorrect implementation of the canonical URL tag. Both situations involved just one line of code and the problems had been on the web sites in question for some time. Unfortunately, the companies had implemented some technical SEO changes without understanding the downside of an improper implementation.

That’s a dangerous situation, and you will learn more by reading my latest post on Search Engine Journal. So, if I have your attention, and you are eager to learn how one line of code could kill your SEO, then head over to Search Engine Journal now. My latest post was just published and details each situation I mentioned above.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/two-examples-of-how-one-line-of-code-could-kill-your-seo-case-studies/37004/

Posted by Glenn Gabe @ 7:13 am in blogging, ecommerce, google, SEO, wordpress

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Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

The Gift Card – The Lamest, Most Uncreative Holiday Gift in the History of Gifting

Gifts Cards are a Lame Holiday Gift

The holiday season is fast and furious for me as a digital marketer. I have the opportunity to help several companies with a wide range of holiday campaigns, from Search Engine Marketing campaigns to Facebook campaigns to Email Marketing campaigns. It’s an exciting time of year for digital marketers. But, as I’m brainstorming and developing campaigns, I’m often researching top gift ideas as part of the process (across industries). And it’s not long before I come across the dreaded gift card.

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while, as gift card buying has hit an alarming rate. I have nothing against the idea of a gift card. Instead, I have a big problem with the idea of giving one to family members and close friends (the people you will be gifting the most during the holidays). In a world where most people are moving at light speed to balance work, kids, friends, etc., I think the gift card has been a byproduct of this madness. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon to see gift lists now filled with “Gift Card From {enter company here}.” And that’s downright pathetic.

Sure, it’s easy, it’s fast, and overall, it gets the job done. But if you take a closer look, it’s not hard to find several key problems with giving gift cards to your loved ones. Let’s explore this in greater detail below.

Nothing Says I Love You Like a Piece of Plastic with a Number on It…
I love you honey, and that’s why I bought you a piece of plastic that looks like a credit card with a 30 digit number on it and a dollar amount. :) Think about it, if you know someone really well, have been observing what they do, while listening to them over an entire year, would you really give them a gift card for the holidays? No, you wouldn’t. You would think about what they like, observe what they need, identify things they would love to have, and then create a gift list filled with those items. Then, when the holidays arrive, you would have a great list of presents to buy them, without having to settle for a lousy gift card.

I don’t know anyone that believes a gift card communicates “I love you more than anything”, or “You’ve been a great friend over the years”, or “Thank you for being a great mom or dad!” Come on people, give up the gift cards. And you wonder why the divorce rate is so high! :)

Low Risk, Low Reward
Anyone that knows me understands that I am not risk-averse. Like business, gifting is a high risk, high reward activity. If you take risks gifting-wise, it could pay off huge dividends for you. On the other hand, if you stay conservative and buy something like a gift card, you may very well get a lukewarm response. Hey, can you blame the recipient? You just handed them a piece of plastic!

When you buy a unique gift, you come armed with the element of surprise. This can be incredibly powerful when gifting. If you hit a home run, that gift will be remembered for a long time. It also shows that you went the extra mile, thought about the person, identified their likes and dislikes, and made a decision to buy a gift. That alone will go a long way… And, if your effort fails, the worst thing that could happen is they don’t like the gift. They’ll still remember that you took a risk and bought them an actual gift. That’s right, an original gift idea, versus that flimsy gift card.

By the way, a recent study by Plastic Jungle found that Americans are sitting on $30 billion in unused gift cards. Think about it, someone receives a gift card, doesn’t really care, forgets about it, and the card is left unused. Wow, what a great gift idea…

A Better Approach to Gifting
OK, so you know where I stand with gift cards. But I’m not here just to hammer gift cards. I’m going to provide a bulleted list of recommendations that can help you break out of the gift card cycle. The approach I’m going to list below is relatively simple to follow, and can make a big impact on your gifting results (yes, I always think in terms of marketing) . Sure, you could still fail and choose the wrong gift, but you could also end up looking brilliant. Remember, high risk, high reward.

Try This Approach to Gifting:
* Identify and list all of the top interests someone has.
* Document the various things they do in a typical week or month.
* Identify pain points for that person. For example, if they jog a lot, do they have the right gear, the right sneakers, do they have a treadmill, are they tracking how far they go, etc?
* Listen to them. That’s right. If you actually listen, you can identify several possible gift ideas. The problem is that most people don’t listen…
* Take Risks. As mentioned earlier, don’t fall for the lame gift card. Sure, it’s easy, but so is buying lunch from McDonalds. The former will make you look dull, while the latter can kill you. Both are bad. Try and come up with something that could surprise them gift-wise. Remember, the element of surprise is powerful.

Leave The Gift Cards Behind, Be Unique, Be Creative
If you follow the bullets above, I’m confident you can find several gift ideas per person that have the potential to blow them away. Gifting should be fun, it should not be an afterthought, and it should not take three minutes at Barnes and Noble or Lowes. Instead, you should take the time and effort to come up with unique gift ideas for family and friends.

Remember, you can be successful at this… You’re not lame. You’re not boring. You remember what people say. You’ve noticed what people need. And when you come through like a gifting superstar, they just might remember what you gave them forever. And as they jump for joy after opening your gift, they can throw the wrapping paper on the person next to them. You know, the person that just got a lame gift card. :)

Happy Holidays.

Posted by Glenn Gabe @ 4:41 pm in ecommerce, holiday-marketing

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Thursday, November 10th, 2011

How To Use Google Plus Ripples To Analyze Content, Sharing, and Influencers

Being neck deep in digital marketing, I can’t get my hands on enough data! Analytics is a core service of mine at G-Squared and I’m always looking for more sources of quality data (and tools that give me that data). Based on my experience over the past 16 years, I’m a firm believer that digital strategies should be guided by hard data and not opinion. And to me, Social Media Marketing should be no different. Yes, it can be a bit more challenging to get that information, but performance should dictate future efforts.

A core piece of Social Media Marketing involves the building and sharing of content. This includes developing the right content and sharing that content via number of mechanisms. It’s also incredibly important to build a following across social networks in order to spark that sharing, when you need it. That said, there are many times that marketers build some content, quickly shorten a URL, share on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, and then lose sight of that content as it hits the web. Sure, you can get some insight via various tools in the market, but it’s darn hard to track content as it gets shared across social networks. That’s an unfortunate reality.

So, wouldn’t it be cool if you could post an update and then view how that update was shared across a specific social network, including identifying influencers along the way? Yes, that’s my subtle lead-in to a free social analytics tool that enables you to do just that. It’s called Google Plus Ripples, it’s already live, and you can tap into its power right now. In addition, I’m going to help you understand more about Ripples and how you can use the functionality to impact your digital marketing efforts.

An Introduction to Google+ Ripples
Google Plus Ripples presents an interactive graph of public shares on Google+. It’s free to use and comes built-in with Google+. Ripples will visually show you who has shared a public post, along with any reshares. People who have shared a post will show up as a circle in the graph, and inside their circle, you can see others who have reshared that person’s post.

In addition, the size of each circle reflects the relative influence of that person. While interacting with the Ripple, you can hover over a member’s name to reveal their photo, name with a link to their profile, and their comment when they reshared the post. The graph is interactive, so you can zoom in, move around, etc. It’s awesome and enables you to drill into the various people (and now pages) that are sharing posts. To access a Ripple, click the dropdown arrow in the upper right-hand corner of any public post in Google+. Then click “View Ripples”.

Here is a screenshot of a Ripple in action:

Hovering over a user brings up their share, comments, and a link to their profile:

The right sidebar contains the comments users have added when resharing the post. These are the same comments you will see if you hover over a person’s name in the graph. The sidebar lets you get a quick view of the comments people are adding as they reshare a post.

But we’re not done yet. Below the graph is a timeline that shows how the post has been reshared over time. You can click the play button to view an animated representation of how that post has been shared by users on Google+.

And last, but not least, you can view additional statistics below the timeline, including Social Hubs (people with the most reshares), the average chain length, and the native language in which the post was shared.

A few important notes:
* Ripples only show public shares, so you are not seeing 100% of the activity for each post.
* Ripples will show activity over the past 53 days. I don’t know why 53 days was chosen, but that’s what is listed in Google’s Help Center for Ripples.
* You can share any Ripple, by copying the URL and sharing with others.

How Digital Marketers Can Use Ripples:
I don’t know about you, but I think this is a pretty nifty tool Google has given us for free. Used properly, it can provide important insight for digital marketers. I have provided some ways you can use Ripples today to analyze how content gets shared across Google+.

1. Find and Connect With Influencers by Vertical
Finding the right people to connect with across social networks can be a daunting task. Google Plus Ripples enables you to see who has interest in specific pieces of content, who reshares posts, what they are saying about those posts, etc. In addition, you have a mechanism for viewing their profile right from Ripples (by clicking their names in the graph or from the right sidebar). This enables you to find people that 1) are actively sharing content, 2) are interested in content within a specific category, and 3) might be providing how they feel about that topic via their comments. That’s outstanding data for anyone looking to follow the right people.

For example, if you focus on selling the latest computer gear, then finding people that actively share content about computer gear is obviously a smart thing to do. Using Ripples, you can find those people, and then find the downstream users that reshared posts. Compare that process to browsing Circles to find people to connect with. I’ll take a user that actively shares over a profile bio any day of the week. :) Remember, these can be the people that end up resharing your own posts about a given subject.

2. Analyze How Various Types of Content Get Shared (and Which Types of Content Get Shared The Most).
If you are developing a content generation strategy, then analyzing Ripples can be incredibly powerful. Using the functionality in Ripples, you can identify the types of content that get shared heavily, how that content is written or presented, and which members are sharing it. You can also view comments about the content, which can tailor your own content generation plan.

For example, you can track how blog posts, videos, infographics, and whitepapers all get shared within your vertical. Based on the data you collect via Ripples, you can tailor your own content plan (which can give you a greater chance of success). Building content takes time, resources, and money. Ripples enable you to analyze what works and what doesn’t within your specific category. You can also combine this data with an inbound link analysis to view activity, shares, comments, and then inbound links that the content has built. More about linkbuilding below.

3. Using Ripples Data for Linkbuilding
Linkbuilding for SEO is extremely important. When developing a linkbuilding strategy, you want to identify the right content to produce, while also finding the right people to connect with that can potentially link to your new content. Google Plus Ripples provides a way to view both pieces of data.

As I explained earlier, you can view how pieces of content get shared and who is sharing that content. But then you can also correlate that information with the number and quality of inbound links the content is generating. Therefore, you can determine what to build, and who to connect with, in order to start building high quality links to your content.

Summary – Watch the Ripples
I hope this post helped explain what Ripples are and how to use them to analyze content, shares, and influencers on Google+. I’m excited that Google decided to empower users by providing a free social analytics tool that’s interactive, easy to use, and extremely valuable. Now it’s time for you to try out Google Plus Ripples. I have a feeling once you dig in, you’ll see how powerful it can be.

Posted by Glenn Gabe @ 7:21 am in google, google-plus, SEO, social-media, web-analytics

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Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

Negatives Are Not Negative – 4 Ways to Use Negative Keywords This Holiday Season to Improve Your AdWords Targeting

How to Use Negatives in Google AdWords to Improve PPC Targeting

If you are running paid search campaigns, then you are probably familiar with negative keywords. If you’re not familiar with them, you should get to know them well. Negatives are keywords you can add to your campaigns and ad groups that stop your ads from triggering when the negative is present in the search query. For example, if you sell toys, but do not carry lego blocks, then you could add the keywords “lego” and “legos” as negative keywords. This would tell Google to not show your ads when either one of those negative keywords were present in the search query. That’s a smart thing to do, since people searching for lego blocks cannot find them on your site, and will never convert.

The Impact of Using Negatives (Properly)
When used properly, negatives can have a big impact on the success of your campaigns. By honing your targeting, negatives can increase your click-through rate, increase your Quality Score, lower your actual cost per click (CPC), and increase conversion. And that’s exactly what you want to do in SEM. It makes sense, since using negatives can get your ads in front of a more targeted audience. Your ads will not show for users searching for items you don’t carry, services you don’t provide, and brands you don’t carry.

Have a Negative, I Mean Happy, Holiday Season!
We are quickly approaching Black Friday and many marketers have already launched their holiday campaigns. If you are running paid search campaigns this holiday season, then my latest post is for you. I decided to provide four ways you can use negatives this holiday season to improve your targeting and boost your SEM performance. I’m going to cover campaign and ad group negatives, singular and plural negatives, phrase and exact match negatives, and negatives that contain special characters like periods and dashes.

My hope is that you can make changes immediately (like today), based on reading my recommendations. But, you are going to have to jump over to Search Engine People to read my post. My latest contribution to SEP went live today! So don’t hesitate, click the link below for my “negative” holiday tips. And remember, negatives are not negative. They can be very, very positive. :)

http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/negative-keywords-christmas-ppc.html

Posted by Glenn Gabe @ 9:08 am in adCenter, adwords, google, holiday-marketing, SEM

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For Writing Effective SEM Copy, John Caples Was Right – Specific Beats General

Can One Line of Code Kill Your SEO Performance? Yes, It Can. [Case Studies]

The Gift Card – The Lamest, Most Uncreative Holiday Gift in the History of Gifting

Negatives Are Not Negative – 4 Ways to Use Negative Keywords This Holiday Season to Improve Your AdWords Targeting

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