In my sole post last week, I mentioned how you might get into searchers heads by finding and understanding personas for your ad text, landing pages, and conversion stream. This week, I’m going to focus on how search marketers can setup matrices to test and fine tune specific aspects of their ad text to maximize clicks to landing pages. Fine tuning click through rate is probably the easiest thing you can do to help conversion, here’s why… Read more…
The concept of using customer personas isn’t new in marketing, but it can be a valuable exercise in finding the right ad text that either compels or pre-qualifies search users to click. Depending on your advertising goals, you may want to consider several unique personas prior to even committing ad texts to a real time test. Read more…
To be honest, I had never heard of Jason Calacanis until he made his keynote address at Search Engine Strategies New York. I had never heard of Mahalo.com either, the supposedly human curated web directory with the highest quality user generated SERPs anywhere. After hearing Jason speak, it’s a wonder he was ever invited to the conference in the first place. Not to say that it wasn’t interesting, mind you. Read more…
Some people have commented that I’m a bit behind in the game, that I’ve waited a while to post my thoughts and reflections on the conference, while other bloggers give up to the minute news and reaction. For me, it’s not about reporting the story, but reporting the take home messages, and the trends in this industry. I like to sleep on things I hear, to think about whether they are applicable and timely. Tim Ash of SiteTuners.com gets the game, and is a highly intelligent presenter. Read more…
Search Engine Strategies New York is quite possibly the most attended online marketing event in North America. The best and brightest in our industry join in various cities throughout the year on the SES tour, but seldom is the turnout as high as in New York City. I had the privilege of attending this year, and on Day 1 of the conference, I’d have to say the session on Auditing Click Fraud was the best. Read more…
To say the migration to Omniture SearchCenter 3.0 and SiteCatalyst 14 has been rough might be the understatement of the year. As previously reported, both upgrades should have addressed severe problems in SiteCatalyst 13.5 and SearchCenter 2.6, but instead of introduced a suite of new glitches. For SearchCenter users, the problems are much worse, as SiteCatalyst seems to work as Omniture intended. However, the main problem with Omniture seems to be communication. Read more…
For those of you that are not familiar with Google Trends, it’s a fantastic online tool that lets you visualize search volume for specific keywords on Google, as well as the coverage those keywords get in news references. Want to discover keywords on the move? Try trending your keywords over the course of 6 months, you may just find a gem or two in the long tail. In this post, I examine a few keywords that I think will become “movers and shakers” in the next few weeks and in the long term. Read more…
After months of client feedback collection through feature requests, bug reports, and competitive pressure, Omniture flicked the switch today for all current Search Center clients. Search Center 2.6 was based on Site Catalyst 13.5 interface and functionality, whereas Search Center 3.0 is a significant departure. With a laundry list of new features, Search Center certainly does deserve the new version number, but are the bugs fixed? Read more…
The factors that affect your online marketing campaigns are too numerous to list, but several online marketers will tell you seasonal changes, cultural events, and even top stories in the news can alter your otherwise normal pattern of metrics. Depending on what those individual events are will determine the affect on your campaign metrics, either hurting or helping conversions. This is a list of my favorite analytics anomalies. Read more…
