Biz Web Marketing

They say it’s the login page to your account? Make them prove it

At some point, there’s a chance you may receive an e-mail that looks like it came from Yahoo!, taking you to something that looks like a Yahoo! Search Marketing login page, but something’s…not quite right. It could be a “phishing” attack from someone who is trying to duplicate a Yahoo! page in order to get your user name and password to hijack your account.

To help combat these phishing scams, we have installed what’s called a “sign-in seal” on our log-in page. Already in use by many financial institutions, a sign-in seal is a cookie-based secret message or image that is displayed on your computer(s) only. (That is, the machine(s) you use to log in to your account.) If you use more than one computer, you’ll need to set up your seal for each. You can create your own custom text message to use as a seal, or upload your own image.

If you do not see your custom seal—and you haven’t cleared your cookies on your browser—when signing into your account, the site you’re on may be a “spoof” site designed to hoodwink you into giving up your valuable personal information. We encourage you to create a customized sign-in seal for your Yahoo! Search Marketing account today, then look for it every time you log in. You can set up your seal from your Yahoo! Search marketing log-in page (the real one).

—The Team at Yahoo Search Marketing

What to do when you get an unexpected traffic surge

There you are, reviewing your account from last week, when you notice a jump in your clicks. Before you call us to find out what’s going on with your account, keep in mind that unexpected traffic is not necessarily a cause for alarm. Consider the following three questions:

First: Have you changed anything in your account recently?

A broad question, to be sure, but try to recall: Have you added keywords or changed your bids? Either of these actions can affect your traffic.

Second: Are you noticing abnormal click activity, or just traffic that’s not converting?

Examine your account and your web logs. Are your ads appearing on sites that are not meeting your business needs? If so, we offer tools to help you control your traffic. Find out more about Blocked Domains, Geo-targeting and Continent Blocking in your Search Marketing Help Section, and get to know your traffic by visiting the Traffic Quality Center.

Third: Have you set a daily spending limit?

Your traffic may fluctuate from day to day. But by setting a Daily Spending Limit, you help control the amount you spend. For example, if you average $250 in clicks per day and set your Daily Spending Limit at $350, you can capitalize on the extra clicks that result from a spike, without breaking the bank.

Submitting a Click Review Request

If you feel you have explored everything above and still have questions, or would like us to investigate your traffic further, our Traffic Quality Center provides simple instructions for submitting a Click Review Request.

After you submit the request, we will perform a series of diagnostic tests and analyses to attempt to identify potential issues that may have affected your traffic. We take all inquiries seriously, and though the length of investigations may vary, we work to achieve a resolution within 10 business days of your request.

Remember, keep an eye on your account, monitor your traffic regularly, and if you do spot something suspicious, let us know—we’re happy to help.

— Kastle Waserman, Communications Manager, Customer Solutions, Yahoo

Recently, I helped a relative get started with an online marketing strategy. Here’s a copy of what I emailed her, hopefully useful for others who may wander here.

1. Start with a User Traffic Monitoring Service To Establish a Baseline

Before you do any of the items listed below, follow this important step. Go to Google Analytics, sign up for a free account. Then you’ll be asked to insert special Web page code into your existing Web site (the code is not visible by people visiting your site) that allows Google to track who is visiting your Web site, where are they coming from, what keywords are they typing (if coming from a search engine), and other interesting trends. Any Web developer should be able to do this for you. Google provides a slick Web-based interface that you will then use to view data as it’s collected on a daily basis. [Phil's note: If you want to see a cool desktop version of Google Analytics, check out Google Analytics AIR].

2. Be sure your Web site is indexed by the major search engines.

Go to each search engine and enter “site:www.yoursite.com” — the “site” keyword “tells” the search engine to look for results just on the subsequent Web address. [Phil's note: this works for Google, Yahoo, MSN as above; for Ask, you'll need to enter another keyword before the query, followed by a space, to make it work properly.]

If you do not see your site come up, then go to each site submission page:
Google
Yahoo
MSN

3. Sign up for one or more “Pay per click” advertising programs.

These work on a keyword bidding basis. You choose specific keywords, you’ll see their “market rates” (per click), set your target bid price (the higher, the more likely your ad will be in a more prominent spot), and a monthly budget, and then run your campaign. Google also provides useful tools which allow you to estimate costs and potential click-through rates.

Google AdSense
http://www.google.com/adwords/

Yahoo Sponsored Search
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/sponsoredsearch_ss.php

Microsoft AdCenter
http://joinadcenter.com

A great website to find Search Engine Promo’s (PPC promo codes) try SearchEnginePromos.com. They have up to date promo codes to get credits towards free PPC advertising.

Which one works best for you is a trial by error effort. Run a campaign for a month or so. You can see which ones perform best.

If you want to know about other advertising systems, check out this resource.

[Phil's note: at the time of writing, both Yahoo and Microsoft are offering $75 credits to get started.]

4. Maintain a Corporate Blog.

Create a corporate blog and use it for marketing opportunities. You can discuss trends in your industry, how you’re tackling major issues, summarize what you learned at a recent conference you attended, even mention your competition. The goal is to maintain a following of readers, even if they are not necessarily customers. Why? This is one of the most powerful ways to leverage word-of-mouth marketing. Someone reading your blog may recommend it to someone they know when a related need comes up during a conversation or email. Or they may reference your blog in their own blog, which inherently gives you even more readers.

You can sign up for a free blogging tool such as Blogger.com (also owned by Google) and either use their pre-built template or hire a Web designer to make it look like your existing Web site for a more integrated approach. You can even setup something like http://blog.mywebsite.com and have it point to the blog (even though Blogger.com is hosting it) and then add a link to the address from your existing Web site.

The drawback is that a high quality blog can be a considerable time investment. If you have an existing marketing resource on your team, maintaining the blog should be something they own.

How to Track Your Blog
Use Google Analytics, Technorati, FeedBurner. The latter two include other value-add features.

5. Participate in Industry-Specific Online Discussions to Get Your Name Out There.

Find all the blogs and message boards related to the industry you’re in. Spend time reading to figure out which ones seem to be a good fit and sound legitimate. Become involved by responding to posts (most blogs these days allow anyone to “comment” on them). Be sure in every post you have a signature line that includes your Web site address. But be genuine when you participate. People can usually tell when you’re simply posting a message for the sake of advertising your business (”spamming”).

How to find blogs:
Google Blog Search
Technorati

How to subscribe to blogs:
1. Sign up for a Web-based “feed reader” (aka “RSS reader”) - my favorite one is Google Reader. Or use a desktop feed reader (Windows’ Outlook 2007 and Mac Leopard’s Mail have it built-in). The advantage of a Web reader (vs. desktop version) is that you can then go back to pull up items using any computer, mobile device, etc. Either way, a reader pulls in feeds from different places, analogous to receiving emails from different people in your inbox. Think of it as a way to get stuff “delivered” to you instead of you going to dozens of Web sites and finding if new information has been posted.

2. When you visit a blog, look for the “RSS” icon in the browser’s Web address box. It means the Web page has a “feed” you can subscribe to. Click on the icon and it should give you a choice to “subscribe” to it. BTW, if you happen to have the Google toolbar installed in your browser, it can be setup to automatically subscribe to feeds using Google Reader.

From Webficient

9 Tips to Help Optimize Your Landing Pages

For obvious reasons we tend to focus a lot on keywords and ad copy. They’re vital to getting search users to click on your ads. But once they have clicked, then what? Hopefully, they’re A) in a buyin’ mood and B) they’ve actually come to the right place.

You can help promote both of these results by optimizing your landing pages. Here are nine tips to help get your leads to stick around and buy from you:

1. Connect the search experience to the landing page experience.
Wherever possible, use the same language on your landing pages as you do in your ads. It’s a real disconnect when you click on an ad that reads, “Online Conversion Rate Counter” only to land on a page selling a “Conversion Calculating Service.”

2. Integrate your landing page into your site.
Some advertisers make the mistake of building stand-alone landing pages for certain keywords that are more-or-less “divorced” from the rest of their sites. This can make your business seem sketchy to potential customers, who you want to be able to trust you with their credit card info. A consistent experience across all of your pages and product offerings can help create a more convincing experience. (More on this below.)

3. Gain their trust.
Use trusted, third-party security providers and make sure their badges and icons are clearly visible.

4. Offer tips and suggestions.
How can potential customers best use the product? If you’re selling steaks, offer a steak au poivre recipe. There’s a potential for up- and cross-sell here, as well. Perhaps monsieur would enjoy a nice bottle of cabernet sauvignon with his tender, juicy filet mignon, oui? Just don’t go crazy with it, mon ami. (See 5 and 6, below.)

5. Stay on target.
If your ad specifies John Deere tractors, make sure all of your tractors for sale on that page are John Deere tractors. In other words, if I had been looking for Caterpillar bulldozers I’d have clicked on an ad for them instead.

6. Cut the clutter.
Your landing page should not be too generic and cluttered. This ties in with the tip above. If your ad is for discount wholesale 7Up, don’t clutter the page up with other un-colas. This helps keep the lead focused.

7. Ban the bling.
Your landing page should be cleanly and attractively designed, but avoid distractions like music or other audio, animations and revolving logos. These can distract prospective customers from their purpose, which is to buy the product or service that they need, hopefully from you. Again, keep ‘em focused on the task.

8. Give them something to do.
A little interactivity can help keep people engaged. For some products, especially big-ticket items, things like video testimonials and 360-degree tours may be good sales aids. Just let customers decide whether or not they want to view them by giving them control. And remember Tip 7: Keep the bling to a minimum.

9. Write right.
Language counts. Think of your landing page as a salesperson in a showroom. What would a salesperson say to a prospect to help “get to yes?” Here are a few classic pointers:

• Make sure that your headers and subheads are clear and direct.
• Deliver your value proposition right away.
• Offer a persuasive message near the call-to-action—You know: “Don’t be left out of this amazing offer,” etc.
• Be nice with your call-to-action copy—”Submit” and “Buy Now” can sound like orders and put some people off. “Try it Now” sounds nicer.

—Michael Mattis, Conversion Tipster

Bloggers who are interested in building high traffic to their blog and maintaining a successful blog should pay particular attention to Search Engine Optimization techniques which can help them improve the search engine rankings of their blogs. All search engines employ some type of algorithm that brings up the resulting links when a user searches for something. No, all search engines don’t use the same algorithm. But that’s not what this discussion is all about. I’m sure all of you are interested in getting your website/blog listed in the topmost search results. Am I not ? Well, listed below are 5 simple tweaks that can greatly influence your ranking in the search results.

1. Keyword Optimization -:

The use of relevant keywords in blog posts is one of the most common and also one of the simplest ways to optimize search engine ranking. It will increase your ranking if you use commonly searched words like for example: If you have a gardening site, you might want to use the word “Home gardening” or maybe even “House-keeping” more in your posts. As a result, when people actually type those phrases in the search box, your website is shown earlier because of the use of it in your web page is higher than the rest.

TIP : Don’t ever overdo it.

2. Get Link Love -:

Many search engines (almost all) rank your site on basis of the number of back links that lead to your site. Now basically you could do link-exchange. But search engines will rank you even higher if you get one-way links. It’s simple: The more back links one has, the more earlier is his page displayed in the search results.

TIP: Try and get as many as One-way links . It’s always more effective than link exchange.

3. Use Image Tags to your Advantage

Bloggers should also be aware that any pictures used on their blog can be used to improve search engine rankings with some search engines. This aspect of search engine optimization is often overlooked because many bloggers believe the pictures are not viewed by search engines. While this is true the search engines do crawl the code of the blog in addition to the content on the blog. This means the search engine will view the information provided in the image tags. Bloggers can take advantage of this by using the image tags to provide relevant keywords which can bolster search engine rankings. However, care should be taken to ensure the keywords used in these tags also accurately describe the image because blog visitors will often see the text included in these tags when they scroll over a picture on the blog.

TIP: Make sure that the tag is applicable to the picture.

4. Sitemaps are Necessary

All websites need sitemaps. Why? Well, every sitemap has links to all the pages in a website and it helps search engine spiders gain even more easier access to your content. And it’s obvious that if more content is tracked by the SE spiders, the more results appear.

TIP: Well, try and go for a more simpler design for your sitemap and don’t go making it too difficult to access your previously posted content.

5. Search Engine Friendly URL’s

Using Search Engine friendly URL’s like http://www.yourdomain.com/category/SEO will be more effective than the long ones. Why? Well long URLs are most likely to be considered as spam by search engines and users. Keep it brief. Don’t be under the impression that longer URLs will impress your visitors. Users generally despise those kind of addresses. It’s not tough to make the change, and frankly the faster you shift to Search Engine friendly URL’s the better.

TIP: To make the URL change, I’d generally recommend Permalinks Migration Plugin.

Let me know if this has helped your search engine ranking by leaving me a comment