 Riding Out The Recession With PPC
Rimm-Kaufman Group
No one can avoid talking about the current financial crisis -- and it's not enough to say that search will be spared because advertisers will start shifting their dwindling budgets online. You need a serious PPC strategy to ride out the recession, and Alan Rimm-Kaufman offers some tips for developing one.
First, make sure your campaign objectives are clear. "This is not the time for hazy goals," he says. "Determine how aggressively or how conservatively you should be advertising, and stick to your numbers. If your SPCs (sales-per-click) decline, so should your bids." And tap robust bid management tools to help you maintain bidding integrity.
Also, don't be afraid to shift dollars to or away from search as necessary. It may not be the top-performing channel anymore. Rimm-Kaufman also suggests working with an agency that caps its fees -- or reduces them proportionally to how much you're spending. "Anything that scales without limit with ad spend or with sales places a heavy burden on your margins." Lastly, he says, don't panic. - Read the whole story... Vertical Spotlight: Search And Furniture Retailers
Furniture World
"Mention the words SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) to most furniture store owners and you're sure to either see blank faces, or hear stories of frustration," says Heather Lutze. "Either they don't utilize these marketing techniques at all, or they've handed their company's Web site SEO and PPC activities over to an agency and have little idea what's going on with either, or they've 'done it themselves' and had lackluster results at best."
So she dishes out some search knowledge with a furniture-based spin, schooling brick and mortar couch-shillers (and e-tailers) on keywords, the synergy between paid and organic search, as well as link building. Though the article is geared toward search newcomers, it's an interesting read into how non-search geeks should view the space. - Read the whole story... Don't Build Links, Grow Them Organically
SEOptimise
Tad Chef says tp eschew all the "link building" talk (and tactics) in favor of more organic methods. "More and more conventional link building methods, like directory submission, are of less and less value," he says. "In fact soon we'll see a situation where all artificial ways of link building will be frowned upon."
Chef serves up a number of suggestions for growing links naturally, including being useful to your target community by developing a WordPress theme, Firefox plugin or other free tool, as well as organizing a recognition ceremony like the Web 2.0 awards.
Other tips include launching a charity contest or drive, offering product rebates or discounts for specific groups (i.e. students, people working from home, etc.) and starting some kind of green initiative. "Of course, all these ways of getting links also get you reputation and fans, and thus traction in social media too," Chef says. "People hate companies and businesses overselling but they love free stuff and those who offer it. When everybody loves you also, those who are willing to spend money will find you." - Read the whole story... Stealthy Competitive Analysis Tools
Future Now
On the hunt for quality competitive analysis tools? Bryan Eisenberg reviews 14 "ways to spy on your competitors' web sites, without breaking any FISA laws," in this post.
He discusses a trio of no-brainers from Google: Alerts, Insights for Search and Trends for Websites, as well as proven tools like Websitegrader (and its sibling Twittergrader). But Eisenberg also digs into lesser-known gems like Web Page Readability, which helps you compare the density and complexity of your page's copy to your competitors', and Attention Meter, which pulls ratings from across Alexa, Compete and Quantcast into one dashboard.
Also, try using the Wayback Machine to see how your competitors' sites have evolved over time, Xinu Returns for a view of your search and social media benchmarks, and FeedCompare to gauge how you stack up in terms of subscribers. - Read the whole story... Hakia Relaunches
ReadWriteWeb
On the heels of Ask's revamp comes Hakia's redesign. The semantic search engine features more structured results, and an influx of "credible" sites to pull data from.
"In order to create this index of trustworthy sites, Hakia is asking volunteers to submit credible, peer reviewed sources," says Frederic Lardinois. "Credible sites are currently limited to health and environmental topics, but Hakia is planning to expand this quickly. By adding these credible sources, Hakia wants to go beyond '10 blue links' and give its users an alternative to popularity driven approaches like Google's PageRank." - Read the whole story... |
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