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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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

A few weeks ago, I commented on the new Demographics Targeting features Adwords introduced as a beta. I pitted males versus females in a conversion test based on two polar opposite image ads. Letting the ads run for one whole week resulted in a substantial amount of impressions and clicks, and the results themselves may surprise you!

In the “why didn’t I think about that” category is a fine example of how Google reads and reacts to the online marketing world. Now students from around the world can compete in the Google Online Marketing Challenge, giving them first hand experience with search engine marketing from the industry leader. But wait a minute, are those real ads and real funds?

Omniture has come a long way in Analytics in a very short time span, and although much of my experience with their company comes via technical support calls and escalating minor annoyances, their SiteCatalyst Excel Client should really be praised for it’s innovation. Many of us have become accustomed to getting metrics online through a web interface, compiling reports through Ajax or Java and having them scheduled for delivery. Omniture does away with that.

I wasn’t planning on writing today, just because it’s a statutory holiday and all, but I saw something today that made me laugh.  In preparing a post for tomorrow detailing the Omniture Excel Client, I noticed that when you revert your Internet Explorer 7 settings back to default Google notices!  If anyone was ever afraid that Google’s starting down the lines of becoming Big Brother, your fears may be warranted.

That’s right, if you didn’t think cell phones were a bad enough influence on drivers, there’s more bad news on the way from Wired.  According to Wired, mobile internet users (more specifically iPhone users) are avid Googlers.  It’s not all doom and gloom, it may help some drivers search for instructions on how to use their turn signal.  In all seriousness, this news should come as no surprise to the search marketing community, but does offer up some serious food for thought on how to get those surfers to convert.

Although Yahoo has rejected a $31 per stock bid by Microsoft to buy the company, they had planned to inflate their true market value with surges of recent growth.  It’s an interesting story of two big names, but two small “Davids” in advertising compared to the “Goliath” that is Google.  Where is Google in all this?  Probably taking the advice of numerous industry insiders telling them to stay out of it.  Here’s why…