Online Marketing - Marketing Don

SEO & PPC Career Volitility

Advice for online marketing careers.  In the last 15 years, I have worked for a huge worldwide corporation, a worldwide franchise, for myself, consulted, two seo/ppc agencies, and companies as their “in-house” internet marketing manager.  In all of those years, my main advice to anyone in that wants to stay in this industry is: you have to have multiple streams of income!

That’s right. The main advice has nothing to do with seo, ppc, internet, online marketing, social media, or any of that.  It has to do with the volatility of online marketing jobs.  One of the agencies I worked for was one of the largest in the world.  They had 100’s of seo accounts, 100’s of ppc accounts, over 100 employees and it was a great place to work.  After being established for several years, they went public, got greedy, and within 12 months of going public they fell apart.  Another agency I worked for was great.  It had some of the best online marketing talent and was run very well.  One day the CEO of the holding company decided he wanted to push out our company CEO and all hell broke loose.  The other exec’s started to leave and the other employees left as well. 

I have definitely learned in this industry (and a few others as well), that things can change in an instant.  Everything could be going great for several months, then poof it’s all over.  Your great, exciting, and fun job is no more.
 
If you do not have side affiliate, consulting, or other part time work you should for 2 reasons 

1. Gives you extra income while you are working and

2. Gives yourself some money in case something happens to your current job

If you know you should start these other streams of income, but keep putting it off, my recommendation would be to immediately schedule 30 minutes to an hour everyday and get started.  Go to meetups to network, learn about affiliate marketing, adsense, paid search, social media, blogging, podcasts, etc…  Not only will this help you in your current job, but help you with possible side jobs as well.

I love online marketing for many reasons, but if I did not have mutliple streams of income, I would be forced to look elsewhere.

Posted in Online Marketing | 6 Comments »

Domains and Trademark Infringement – Steps To Get Your Name Back

Someone has a domain name with your exact or similar trademarked name in it, now what?

In the various agencies and companies I have worked for, domain trademark infringement seems to be coming up more and more.  There are various forms of domain trademark infringement.  There is cybersquatting (sitting on or trying to use someone’s trademarked name for profit – then possibly selling the name to the trademarked owner for a high price).  Then there is typosquatting (similar to cybersquatting, but buying variations and misspellings of the trademarked names).  Sometimes these domains are bought simply to hold on to hoping the trademarked owner will buy them, sometimes they are used for content ads and affiliates to gain profits from people typing in these names and misspellings.

First check to see who is using your name.   If you go to Network Solutions Whois page and type in the domain, in most cases, this will give you the information you need.  If not try some of the other registrars whois pages.  You may get more information from them.

Once you have their contact information, there are several different ways to approach the person.  I recommend the “nice” approach.  Even though this person may be violating laws, they can make the transition very difficult for you.  It may take several months and several thousands of dollars if they do not cooperate.  I prefer email for 2 reasons: a) it leaves a paper trail b) the person may not get as defensive and may be more likely to transfer if they can reply via email.

1.  Email the person.  Just a basic letter similar to:

Dear ……
My name is [name] and I am the [title] for [title of your company].  We recently noticed you own a domain name that is very similar to our trademarked name. 
We kindly ask that you transfer the domain ownership to us by [date 2 weeks from today].  If we do not hear from you by that date, we will be forced to pursue the matter through legal means.
Please contact me before above to for transfer instructions.
Thank you

2.  If still no reply, you may want to have your attorney generate a cease and desist letter.   The letter may have more impact coming from an attorney.  Again, ask for the immediate transfer and consequences if transfer is not completed by a specific date.

3. If still no reply, here is where is may get tricky.  You now have the choice to go through the procedure to get the domain legally or send one more letter asking for the domain with a price.  Yes, it may be legally your domain, but as mentioned above, to go through the process to get the domain may take several months and cost thousands of dollars.  I would recommend one final attorney letter to purchase the domain.  Depending on the name, you may ask offer as little as $500. 

4. Still nothing? Visit the ICANN instructions by contacting the registrar and going through the long process of forcing the person to release the domain.  I have never gotten this far and would love to hear from someone that actually had to go through this process and how it went.

Other resources:
ICANN
Wikipedia

Posted in SEO | 1 Comment »

Why Does Google Adwords Shut Down For Maintenance?

In my Adwords account I see a message, “On March 8, 2008, AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM Eastern Time due to system maintenance. Please note that your campaigns will continue to run normally during this short downtime. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

I wrote about this before, but have never resceived a clear answer.  I do not understand why, with Googles technology, employees, and $$, that they cant complete maintenance/updates without becoming “unavailable.”  I also do not know why they need to complete the update in the middle of the day on Saturdays. Why not at 1am to 5am EST?

Can anyone give some insite?

Posted in PPC | 2 Comments »

Does Load Time Affect Natural Rankings?

According to a Google Adwords recent update, Google posted that load time affects your Adwords Quality Score, https://adwords.google.com/support/?fulldump=1#66238 scroll down to the title “How does website load time affect my landing page quality?”

About a year ago, the question came up regarding natural search: “Does website load time affect natural search rankings?” My answer was, that I did not have any proof, but it would make complete sense that Google would take into account not only load time, but how “clean” your site was.  By “clean” I mean HTML and other errors that can be found by testing your site in the http://validator.w3.org

Though I still do not have any proof, I believe Google announcing that load time is a factor for Adwords, helps make my case that it does affect your natural search rankings.  You still may not be convinced until you have proof, which Google may provide in the future now that they let this information out.  For now, as a best practice, I still feel everyone should check their sites load time, server time, and check their site in the validator.   I have other helpful hints from my last post First Steps To SEO

Posted in SEO | 1 Comment »

The Absolute First Step to Optimizing Your Website

I bet you are thinking this article is about title tags, meta tags, keyword research, or even content, it’s not.  It is about making sure your site is as search engine friendly as possible and is not getting penalized by the engines.  You can optimize all you want, but if your site is not bot friendly, it may not matter much.

Here are some steps to take to check your site:

Google webmaster tools.   Go into your google account and validate your site and add a google sitemap.  https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/about.html
The information you get back is invaluable.

Is your site all All flash/ajax
It is ok to have flash and ajax on your site, however it not ok to have an ALL flash page without any text or text links nor is it ok to have an ALL Ajax site that goes from page to page without the url changing.
Dynamic urls  “?” static pages only

The engines are doing a much better job recognizing dynamic urls.  The main issue is that the urls are static for each page.  If the product on the page are green widgets and the url is www.yourdomain.com/?12345.aspx this is not a problem as long as the page stays ?12345.aspx with that specific product on it everytime you, or someone else, goes to the page.
Search engine friendly urls

With dynamic urls, best practice is to use a url re-write to name the urls with proper keywords.  In the example above, the url should be www.yourdomain.com/green-widgets.aspx
 
According to others that have tested dashes vs underscores vs keywords up against each other, for SEO use dashes first (green-widgets), then against (greenwidgets), then underscores (green_widgets).  Recently there was some controversy when Matt Cutts stated underscores are recognized evenly in Google.  The hoopla did not affect me at all because I would never use underscores anyway.  Underscores are horrible for usability reasons.   If you send the link to someone or someone links to your page in an article, it is hard to tell if it is an underscore or a space because the link gets underlined.

Session id’s
If there is anyway to get rid of them, do it. Similar to dynamic urls session ids used to be a complete nightmare for the bots.  Google is getting better, but even if Google figures them out, it may take years for the others engines to catch up.  If it changes the url everytime someone visits, the bots may recognize these as duplicate pages or get stuck trying to index the site.  I think there is a way around this with PHP.  Maybe someone can comment if they know PHP?

Duplicate content & Crosslinking
In Google search box type in related:yourdomain.com
and look at the results.  Do you have orphaned pages, doorway pages, duplicate pages/sites

Now type in site: yourdomain.com
and look at the results.   Do you have orphaned pages, doorway pages, duplicate pages/sites.  Go all the way to the last page.  Are you getting an Omitted Results link?  If so, click on it and look through those links again.  Check to make sure you do not have duplicate https and http pages, duplicate meta tage, content, etc…

Hidden content
In your browser, go to Edit and “Select All.”  Look for images, links, and pixels that get highlighted that do not appear when the select all is off.  These are “hidden” from the engines and your site will get penalized if it hasn’t already.

Javascript hiding
Google does not follow javascript links, however google does READ javascript and checks your external files to see if you are trying to hide content or trying to trick the bots.

Frames
I haven’t seen a site in frames for a while.  If your site is in frames there are things you can do to optimize it, but I am not even going to go into it.  Put your Commodore 64 away and buy dreamweaver or other web software and create a new functional, user friendly website.

Robots.txt
In your browser, type in yourdomain.com/robots.txt Are you blocking categories that you shouldn’t be?  Are you allowing the bots to index categories that it shouldn’t be?
 One of the first things the engines bot does is check this file to see where and where not to go.
http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html
 
Server status & Redirects 301
Go to www.rexswain.com and click on HTTP Viewer.  Type in your url.  The results show how long it takes your server to show the site and whether or not you have any redirects.  If you have a redirect, in most cases it should be a 301 redirect.  301 redirects tell the engines that it is a permanent redirect.  This helps in 2 ways.  First it prevents duplicate content.  A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect so it will still view the old page and new page in the index.  Secondly, a 301 redirect will tell the engines to take all the backlinks from the original page and carry them to the new page.  Check old interior pages as well.  They should 301 to the new page.
Stay away from meta, javascript, and other redirects.
Check you non-www site as well.  Your domain without the www in front of it should 301 to the www. url.  If it does not, I believe it is a simple change in apache.  In IIS it is a little more difficult, but can be done.

Textlink sitemap
Mandatory, no.  Good idea, yes.  Make it as easy as possible for the engines to find your pages.  A link to your site map and a simple format may expedite the engines finding your interior pages.  A good example for a large site is http://www.apple.com/sitemap/
 
404 Error page
Like the sitemap, not mandatory, but may help the bots, and customers, stay on your site.  A good example for a large site is http://www.apple.com/404error
 
Webpage optimizer
I really like this tool.  It tells you download times and areas needing improvement.  It is currently a free tool and I am not affiliated with them, or any other site mentioned in this article, in any way. http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/
 
Validator
This is a little controversial.  Some say it does not matter, some say it does.  I am on the “it does” side and should be done no matter what anyway.  The validator checks to see if your site is compliant with W3C standards.  I believe this helps with SEO because it helps the engines funnel through your site with minimal errors.  If HTML tags are missing, you have 2 body tags, etc… this may delay, or even worse, stop the bot from crawling past that page.  It may also help with browser issues (site looks differently in IE compared to Firefox).
http://validator.w3.org/
 
If there are items I missed, please let me know.

Posted in SEO | 6 Comments »

What Do You Mean You Can’t Hire Jack Welch?

I have a “Front Porch” category and this post will definitely qualify.  Basically has nothing to do with online marketing, but want to write about it anyway.

I was speaking with someone that works at a state university.  There were looking for a manager for their department to manage the facility and personnel.  They were having a tough time trying to fill the position.  I asked what the requirements were and was told that the person had to have a Phd and be a tenured professor at a university.  I asked, “so you are telling me, if Jack Welch applied to be the head of that department, he wouldn’t qualify?”  She said that was correct, he would not qualify.

If you are looking for a manager to lead and manage, check your requirements.  If they would prevent some of the top leaders/managers or other experienced and motivated candidates who have proven leasdership skills from applying for the position, there is a problem.  You are setting yourself up for failure.

Posted in Front Porch | 2 Comments »

Analytics, Why bother?

I have been interviewing people for an email marketing position we currently have available.  More often than not, when I ask about how they measured a successful email marketing campaign, they reply with “I look at open rates and click thru rates.”  I hear similar replies from people that work on paid search accounts.  They look at click thru rates.  If you have any type of form for leads or sell products on your site, conversions and revenue has to be a factor in the success of your campaigns.

High click thru rates do not mean high conversions/revenue

Scenario #1

You sell green widgets.  You have a subject line, maybe something like “Save Up To 70% On Green Widgets.”  People open the email.  They get to the email and your creative person designed a fantastic ad with call to actions.  Many of your potential customer clicks on the ad.  Notice I wrote “potential?”  They are not a customer of yours yet.  They get to your site and they are directed to your home page and cant find what they are looking for or, even worse, the sites landing page does not clearly describe the actual product and how to buy it.  The customer gets frustrated and leaves your site.

Scenario #2

You sell green widgets.  You have a subject line, maybe something like “We Sell Green Widgets.”  Less people open the email.  They get to the email and your creative person designed an ok ad with no call to actions, but professional looking.  Some of your potential customers click on the ad.  They get to your site and they are directed to an easy to read specific product page or category page.  They find exactly what they are looking for and buy.

Number 1 has a higher click thru rate, lower revenue.  Number 2 has a lower click thru rate, but higher revenue.  I would take number 2.

I see this in Goolge Adwords account as well.  If you have conversion tracking in your Adwords Account,  the ads will show click thru rate and the number of conversions that particular ad generated.  Hopefully you have at least 2 ads in each adgroup.  From there you can see that some ads have a higher click thru rate, but lower conversion rate.

Whether it is emails, paid search, natural traffic, etc.. if you do not track to the conversion (for leads) and revenue (for ecommerce sites) you are not measuring the true success of your campaign.

Posted in Email | 2 Comments »

Adding Pages To Your Site May Lower Your Rankings

Rumor:  If you add pages to your site, you will dilute your backlinks and your sites rankings will be affected.

Hypothesis:  I have helped optimize 100’s of sites and have not witnessed this occurrence happen before, however I have never tried it in a controlled environment where the only change that took place was the addition of pages.  My hypothesis would be that nothing would happen.   My hypothesis was wrong!

Process:  Add a new category to a site that currently has about 1500 pages.  The new category is related to the other products of the site (not duplicates, but same theme).  The new category would add approximately 100 pages to the site. 

Test:  When site is stable (averaging the same position for a several weeks) add the new category and pages to the site.  Do not make further changes to the site until at least a week after the site has been visited by googlebot.

Our home page was in position #2 for our main term in Google. The site has a Google PR of 4.  After adding the new category and about 100 pages, our rank dropped from position 2 to 5 within 3 weeks.   The site has been live for over one year and has never been below position 2 before this time.

We added an index, no follow tag to our new category page making the category page visible to the engines, but blocking the 100+ new pages behind that category page (no other way for engines to find those pages).  Within 3 weeks we were back to position 2.

Conclusion:  Adding pages to a site may affect your rankings.  After all of this, why did I write “may?”  Even though I firmly believe the additional pages caused the drop in rank, I also believe there are other factors involved and I cannot make a blanket statement that this will happen to all sites. 

I think you have to take into consideration the size of the site, the number of pages being added, and the quantity and quality of backlinks to home and deeplinks to interior pages.  If you add 100 pages to a 50,000 page website that already has great backlinks, I do not believe it would have any effect on the sites rankings. 

I would love to hear others opinions especially if you have increased the number of pages to your site with about 10% new pages all at once.  Whether or not you arrived at the same conclusion, please feel free to comment (include size of site, PR, number of pages added, etc…).

Posted in SEO | 7 Comments »