Lorna Li | Green Marketing 2.0

Tags are labels that people use to make it easier to find blog posts, photos and videos that are related. Technorati is a blog search engine that employs tags to index content found in the blogosphere. Placing Technorati tags at the bottom of your blog posts is essential if you want to be indexed quickly by Technorati.

When I say quickly, it is almost instantaneous.

SimpleTags

SimpleTags is a free WordPress plugin that will allow you to easily generate Technorati tags at the bottom of your post. While there are already several tag-generating WordPress plugins out there, SimpleTags is the only one that does not make you use the custom fields within WordPress. It’s really that simple.

Download SimpleTags.

Ultimate Tag Warrior

The Ultimate Tag Warrior (UTW) is a free plugin that increases post tagging capabilities and expands site navigation through the creation of lists of tags. UTW also allows you to get an overview of your tags through tag clouds and graphic representation such as a long tail graph and/or weighted bar arrangement. UTW is a versatile tagging plugin that has a numerous features that allow for a wide range of customization, such as:

• Create a tag archive page
• Display a tag cloud
• Display a long-tail graph
• Display a weighted bar

Download the Ultimate Tag Warrior.

Tag Cloud Widget for UTW

When used in conjuction with the popular WordPress Side Bar Widgets AND the Ultimate Tag Warrior, this free widget enables you to add a tag cloud to your WordPress sidebar. Tags are sized according to their popularity.

Download the Tag Cloud Widget for UTW.

Technorati Tags: SEO, WordPress plugins, search marketing, search engine optimization, SimpleTags, tagging, technorati tags, ultimate tag warrior, utw, tag cloud widget for utw, tag cloud, lorna li

I am just getting through a round of SEO enhancements on 2 blogs. I am currently in the midst of testing my new plugins and trying to get them all to work. With the help of Ross Chapman, my eco-conscious WordPress and Joomla! developer, we identified several free WordPress plugins that enable search engine optimization, social bookmarking and RSS distribution.

Unlike the Joomla! Extensions Directory, WordPress plugins are randomly distributed throughout the Web. While the official WordPress site claims that now there is a central place to download all WordPress plugins, I assure you, there’s more out there in cyberspace, some better than what you would find in the WordPress Plugin Database.

I evaluated, installed and uninstalled several SEO plugins, most of which focused on meta data and were extremely limited from a true SEO standpoint. What I was most interested in was a plugin that enabled completely customizable title tags for blog posts.

The Importance of Title Tags for SEO

Title tags are the most important of the on-page factors for search engine optimization. According to SEO expert Craig Hordlow of Red Bricks Media, an SF-based search marketing agency, 90% of search engine relevance comes from the title tags.

Title tags that are keyword rich, customized descriptions of your page content are excellent spider food. Unfortunately, in Word Press, and in many other content management systems, post titles are often default title tags, which eliminates your ability to incorporate synonyms and alternate phrases that can capture additional search visibility.

An extremely annoying thing about WordPress is that it will place your blog name at the beginning of your title tag, which gives higher search relevance to your blog name than keywords in your post title. What’s even more heinous is seeing “blog archive” smack dab in between your blog title and post title. Who the hell thought THIS was a good idea?

SEO Title Tag 2.0 beta 7

Of all the SEO plugins I reviewed, the only one that offered truly customizable title tags is SEO Title Tag 2.0 beta 7 is a free Word Press plugin written by SEO experts for WordPress. SEO Title Tag is a fantastic plugin authored by SEO specialist web agency Netconcepts. It allows you to:

• Override a page’s default title tag with a custom tag
• Allows mass editing of title tags for all posts, static pages, category pages, tag pages - in fact any url, at once
• Reverses the order of your blog name and title, giving more keyword prominence to your title, rather than the blog name
• And more!

The best thing about this plugin is that it’s FREE! Thanks Stephan!

Download SEO Title Tag 2.0.

Now only if I can get it to work…

Technorati Tags: SEO Title Tag 2.0, SEO, WordPress plugins, search marketing, Stephan Spencer, Netconcepts, search engine optimization, lorna li

Both Google and Yahoo offer PPC conversion tracking. While measuring impressions, clicks, CTR, cost, CPC, etc. is important, ultimately, what you really want to get down to is measuring and improving conversions.

Why?

If you approach PPC from the perspective of generating traffic, you are essentially throwing money into a void. Oh - some call this branding.

Branding is important, but, sales are better. Measuring conversions boils down to understanding your return on investment (ROI).

Also, you will find that some of your keywords may generate a high CTR, but never convert. You definitely want to ferret these keywords out and reassess your bidding strategy with them.

How does Conversion Tracking Work?

Conversion tracking involves placing a cookie on the user’s computer when the person clicks on an ad. If the user clicks on your Google PPC ad and reaches one of your conversion pages, the user’s browser sends a cookie to a Google server, and a small conversion tracking image is displayed on your site. When such a match is made, Google records a successful conversion for you.

In order to enable Google Conversion Tracking, in your Google Adwords UI, go to your desired account’s “Campaign Management” tab and click on the “Conversion Tracking” link. Follow the steps to generate a snippet of javascript, which you will then need to paste onto the”Thank You” page for one of your desired actions, such as sales, request for info, registration, etc.

Once this is set up, your Google reports will now show additional columns of data related to conversion statistics. For more detailed information about how Google Conversion Tracking works, download the Google Adwords Conversion Tracking Guide.

Technorati Tags: Pay-Per-Click, PPC, PPC conversion tracking, google adwords, SEM, search marketing, paid search, lorna li

Congratulations - you’ve set up your Google Adwords account and are ready to launch your first PPC campaigns!

Somewhere very quickly down the road you are going to want to test your ad copy and perform landing page tests in order to continually identify winning creative and improve your conversion rate. Here is an overview of how you might set up and perform basic A/B split tests in Google Adwords. These insights can be applied to other paid search programs.

A/B testing is a method of advertising testing by which a baseline control sample is compared to a variety of single-variable test samples. While a classic direct mail tactic, A/B split testing has been recently adopted within the interactive space to test PPC ads, banner ads, emails and landing pages.

To perform A/B testing correctly, you will need to deploy a control - usually the strongest, most consistently performing version of your ad - alongside at least one or more variations of this ad. Bear in mind, in order to correctly identify which variable is responsible for changes in response rate or desired outcome, the ads must essentially be identical except for one variable difference.

Confused?

If you are simply testing ad creative, you have 3 lines to work with, or 3 variables. Some might include the destination url as the 4th variable, but for simplicity’s sake, I will focus on 3.

1. Title
2. Description 1
3. Description 2

You have limited space, so understand that each line must carry its own weight, yet at the same time, reinforce the whole message you are trying to convey through your ad.

PPC Split Testing – Step by Step Instructions on Testing Ad Copy

1. Make sure ‘ad optimization’ is “off” the campaign settings in order to ensure all ads are served equally.

2. Determine how many ads you can successfully test based on your daily volume of impressions. If you have a large volume of impressions, such as 10,000 daily impressions, you can serve more ads than if you had 100 impressions a day. However more ads means more data to crunch. Also, bear in mind that more ads you have, the less proportion of time each one is served, and the longer it will take to gather statistically significant data.

3. Create 2-4 titles (T below), description line 1s (D1 below), description line 2s (D2 below), and then mix and match them. Remember, these go up exponentially, testing 3 lines is 27 ads (i.e. #t x #d1 x #d2).

Graphically, your ads will plot out to look something like this:

Ad# T D1 D2
1. A A A
2. A A B
3. A B A
4. A B B
5. B A A
6. B A B
7. B B A
8. B B B

As you can see, with just 2 variations of each line, we now have 8 ads, thus the more copy you test, the more your data analysis work will expand.

4. Determine your time frame for testing. Give yourself at least a few days, though 2-3 weeks should yield solid data. Also factor in any holidays, and allow more time to account for any deviations in user behavior during this period.

5. Once you’ve reached your time frame for testing, it’s time to analyze the results. Export your data into an excel spreadsheet. Google’s robust reporting tools will allow you to export practically every data point imaginable in a myriad of ways. In this case, you will want to download a report on Ad Performance, which will give you stats on the performance of each ad by Impressions, Clicks, CTR, Cost, CPC, and Avg Position.

However, in order to get a read on conversions, you will need to enable Google Conversion Tracking. With Google Conversion Tracking enabled, you will have additional columns of conversion related data in your reports that will help you better analyze your PPC split test results.

Technorati Tags: Pay-Per-Click, PPC, A/B testing, split testing PPC, PPC ad testing, SEM, search marketing, Google Adwords, lorna li

According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO). North American advertisers spent $9.4 billion on search engine marketing (SEM) in 2006, a 62 % increase over 2005. SEMPO researchers also estimate SEM spending to double by 2011, at an aggregate spending total of $18.6 billion.

However, while only a tiny percentage of small and medium size businesses currently contribute to this huge volume of advertising spend, many analysts predict that the number of small businesses will grow significantly over the next few years.

If you are a small, environmentally sustainable business with a limited advertising budget or a nonprofit seeking other avenues of funding, PPC ads can be an inexpensive, cost-effective way to reach a targeted segment of customers. And now is a great time to get in on it, before the green industry gets uber-competitive.

PPC - More Bang for the Buck

Pay-Per-Click Ads are small Internet text ads with a short description that link to a Web site that usually appear on the right hand side of your search engine results pages (SERPs) and in designated sections on many content-driven Web sites and blogs. Advertisers bid to have their ads show up when users search for certain keywords, or when Web site features those specific keywords in the content of that web page. Advertisers only pay when a user clicks on their ad and visits their Web site.

Depending on how competitive your market is, the cost-per-click on certain keywords can be as cheap as a few cents a click to $5, $10 or even more. However, anyone can start a PPC advertising program on as little as a few dollars per week.

The first great thing about PPC advertising is that it is treeless. With print direct mail, at a 2% response rate - which is considered to be good - 98% of your mailing gets trashed. In my opinion, no matter how “successful” the campaign metrics, print direct mail is an incredible waste of time, energy, and resources.

The second great thing about PPC advertising is that your campaign results are available within days of the launch of your campaign. By contrast, direct mail advertising campaigns often take at least 3 months to close, and the first responses typically roll in 6 weeks after the mail date. Other forms of traditional marketing - print ads, TV and radio commercials - can be extremely expensive, yet, entirely unmeasurable. It is nearly impossible how many people viewed your glossy magazine ad, and how many of those people actually went out and bought your product.

With PPC, you can track all metrics from number of clicks to conversions in less than a week. Furthermore, based on your campaign statistics, you can tweak and adjust your bids, edit your text ads, and perform A/B split tests on ad creative and multivariate tests on your landing pages as often as you want, when you want - and see the results the following day. This is impossible with other forms of traditional media - not only will it prove to be very expensive, it will drive your designers and media vendors utterly crazy. And you won’t receive your results, if you are lucky, until the following quarter.

Understand PPC before you begin, or you will waste your money

Implementing a successful PPC campaign requires a certain level of skill and understanding, so read up about it before you begin. You will need to:

• set up your account correctly
• know how to select and price keywords
• know how to write compelling ad copy
• have at at least one landing page
• know how to perform ad testing and landing page tests
• be willing to monitor and tweak your campaign frequently

While PPC professionals will employ a number of arcane techniques and strategies, there are 4 main factors to PPC success that everyone should know. I will start with what I believe to be the most important:

1) Get Creative With Your PPC keywords, then Narrow it Down

Come up with a large, robust initial list of keywords and key phrases, and then narrow it down to the ones worth bidding on. To further fine-tune your targeting and avoid paying for clicks from people unlikely to buy your product, create a list of negative keywords - search terms where you don’t want your ad to appear. For example, if you are selling gourmet, organic, hand-crafted and fair-trade chocolate truffles, you will probably want to include the negative keywords “free”, “cheap”, and “discount” in your campaigns.

Also, if you have a limited budget, you may want to choose to display your ads only on the search network and turn the content network off. In general, content network ads tend to have a lower click through rate (CTR) than search ads. By showing your ads only to people actively searching for those keywords, you will get more bang for your PPC buck.

2) Put Your Keywords In Your PPC Ad Text

If your ad text is not relevant to the search term, chances are, no one will click on it. A low click through rate (CTR) can cause Google to render your ad inactive for that keyword, which will require you to increase your initial bid in order to enter the market.

Make sure your keyword is in the headline, and if not, at least in the description. The user’s search query will show up bolded on the SERP, so if your ad creative has matching keywords, these will appear more prominently as bolded text, and your ad will stand out more on the page.

3) Send PPC Traffic to a Relevant Landing Page

One of the most important factors to PPC success is driving targeted traffic to a landing page, NOT your homepage. Your landing page should be directly relevant to the ad that links to it. For example, if you have listed a text ad for “Sustainable Bamboo Cutting Boards”, be sure to send visitors to a landing page about eco-friendly bamboo cutting boards, and not bamboo products in general, or you will lose them.

Design your landing page to quickly take your visitors to product selection, purchase and check-out with a little clicks as possible. If you want them to sign up for something, make the form as simple and hassle-free as possible. Think of your landing page as funnel. Create no distractions, leave no option for escape.

If you are running a nonprofit, link your text ad a donation page, and not a general info page about your organization’s mission and vision. If you are raising money for your rainforest Adopt-An-Acre campaign, make sure your Adopt-a-Rainforest text ad takes the visitor to a landing page about this specific program, and not a page about a different conservation initiative, nor your general donation or membership page.

4) Test, Test and Test Some More

Finally, running a successful PPC program depends on your ability to track results and tweak your campaigns on a frequent basis. As the bidding landscape changes daily, you will need to monitor and adjust your strategies accordingly.

You will want to test ad creative and improve your ad creative. Google and Yahoo are set up so that split testing is easy. You will also want to test your landing pages and determine which variables - such as headline, main image, ad copy - attract more conversions. Google Optimizer allows you to easily perform multivariate testing on your landing pages.

Finally, running a successful PPC program depends on your ability to track results and tweak your campaigns on a frequent basis. As the bidding landscape changes daily, you will need to monitor and adjust your strategies accordingly.

You will want to test ad creative and improve your ad creative. Google and Yahoo are set up so that split testing is easy. You will also want to test your landing pages and determine which variables - such as headline, main image, ad copy - attract more conversions. Google Optimizer allows you to easily perform multivariate testing on your landing pages.

The fun part about developing your PPC strategies is testing “out of the box” ideas. For example, most of us who care about environmental conservation are keenly aware of how active the Bush Administration has been in dismantling existing environmental laws and undermining the nation’s overall environmental policy. The Bush Administration’s environmental track record is, for most conservation-minded individuals, a miserable failure.

Some of you might be familiar also with the Google bomb for the keywords “miserable failure” that linked to the biography of George W. Bush.

The last time I Googled “miserable failure” a text ad pop up that said, “Yes, We Think So, too”. Who was that ad from? The Natural Resources Defense Council.

Technorati Tags: Pay-Per-Click, PPC, SEM, search marketing, paid search, green marketing, PPC primer, lorna li