The Vizion Search Engine Optimization Blog
- 2008Feb193 Questions You Must Ask Yourself About Your PPC
No matter if your campaigns spend $500 or $500,000 a month these three questions could save you from wasting your money and almost immediately increase the return of your investment in paid search marketing.
1. How many keywords are you currently bidding on in your paid search campaigns?
2. How many of those keywords have had some type of conversion in the last 6 to 12 months?
3. Why are you still bidding on keywords that have not had any conversions?
This is one of the most common errors I find when our agency begins managing an existing paid search account for a new client. Would you keep betting on a horse if it continuously lost?
If you are not tracking conversions, bookmark this blog and come back in a month after you begin tracking conversions and read this again.
- 2008Feb12Search Engine Optimization Pricing
I’ve written about this in my Search Engine Watch column, to some extent, but I think it’s worth a little more detail.
It seems to me that many prospects who call into Vizion Interactive want to gravitate – almost immediately – to the question “how much do you charge for search engine optimization services”.
This is why I have made it my mission to try and help people understand what goes into a search engine optimization project, so that they get a better understanding why there should not be a “cookie cutter price” for search engine optimization services.
Imagine if you were to build a house. You would probably need to get a quote for the land, a quote for the various builders (quality varies), a quote depending on the square footage, etc.. All of these things must be considered because it’s a unique project based upon what you want.
It’s the same thing with search engine optimization. Some websites are “ready made” for search engine optimization and may require “nothing more” than keyword research, competitive analysis, site structure/Information architecture analysis, standard recommendations for titles/meta descriptions/meta keywords, a sitemap, etc.. However, some other websites may be lacking on [...]
- 2008Feb8SEO Request for Proposal RFP
In my push towards helping to create some Standards, demystify search engine optimization and help more and more people get search engine optimization into their marketing budgets, I am offering up a free RFP template for those seeking search engine optimization services.
Certainly, there will be other search engine optimization firms out there who may want to offer some suggestions AND I WELCOME THEM! (add them as a comment to this post, and I will try to include them, as we revise this moving forward).
As with all things “interactive”, this document should be a living/breathing thing, constantly evolving to include other key influencers.
Update: I look forward to hearing more suggestions. In the meantime, here is Version 3 of the Search Engine Optimization RFP.
- 2008Jan28Things to Avoid with Google AdWords
Duplicate keywords competing in multiple ad groups or the same ad group
Uncompetitive bids causing low ad placement
Terms that have had low impressions or clicks still active in the account
Terms that have been made inactive by Google for too low of a bid
Terms that have had cumulative spends but no “conversions” or “leads”
Ad text that is inconsistent, non compelling or lacking a strong call to action statement
Lack of negative keywords to eliminate unwanted traffic
Poor account structure that limits proper budgeting or has a negative effect on the over quality score- 2008Jan28Digg: A Victim of Social Promotion?
Last week Digg changed the way its algorithm promotes stories to the Digg home page. The changes were implemented to prevent users from colluding to promote each others’ links.
Essentially, Digg wants to protect the quality of their product (socially curated media) by making it difficult to game the system for undeserved results. As Digg has long been rumored to be shopping itself around for buyers, it makes sense that they would want to preserve a high level of quality by keeping out the Digg equivalent of spammers and exploiters. Ultimately, its success will depend on maintaining high-value content.
The idea behind Digg is that good content and links will rise to the top as more people ‘digg’ or endorse any item they find appealing. Theoretically, the more Diggs a particular item gets, the more popular it is, and the more value it has to the readers. The reality is that just like with any voting system, Digg can and will be manipulated. As long as individual users have the power to affect the outcome, they will attempt to undermine the quality of the result for personal gain.
Unfortunately what we’re learning here is that the same forces that make [...]
- 2008Jan23Canonical issues: the details matter
Most people are aware that they’d like their website to be accessible regardless of whether a visitor types in the WWW prefix or not, but they usually don’t think to check whether or not an appropriate 301 redirect is setup to enable this. In today’s post, I will explain why paying attention to such details is important, and how you can bolster your SEO campaign by ensuring consistency in this area.
In brief, most website home pages are accessible through several “different” URLS. For example:
http://yourwebsite.com
http://yourwebsite.com/
http://yourwebsite.com/index.php
http://www.yourwebsite.com
http://www.yourwebsite.com/
http://www.yourwebsite.com/index.phpBecause of this, search engines may not always treat each “different” URL as being the same page. In fact, Google (according to Matt Cutt) has reason NOT to equate all variations because there are websites out there that intentionally have different content across such variations.
So what?
It is possible that your SE rankings are being affected by this issue. If the search engines see these “different” URLs for your website as being different webpages altogether, then you are losing PageRank and probably showing up lower in the SERPs than if the search engines saw these variations as ONE web page.
How can you fix it?
You’ll need to choose what you want your default page to be (e.g. http://www.yourwebsite.com/) and [...]
- 2007Dec2Search Engine Marketing Conferences
Mark discusses the reasons why you shouldn’t miss an opportunity to attend a search engine marketing conference.
I am flattered to have people ask me to speak at conferences. This week (as I write this, it’s “this week”), I will be speaking at Pubcon in Las Vegas. At the same time, Search Engine Strategies will be taking place in Chicago. You might ask “is there really that much information out there for this Industry”? I am saying, emphatically, “yes”.
Attending one of these conferences will leave you with a wealth of knowledge. Regular attendance keeps you up-to-speed on all of the many changes that happen, each year, in our incredibly dynamic Industry.
Some people have asked me “which conference should I attend”? That’s a loaded question. If I could have found a way to be at both Search Engine Strategies and Pubcon, I would have done it in a heartbeat. They are both fantastic conferences, full of terrific speakers and they offer a wealth of great networking opportunities.
Due to the fact that my Search Engine Watch column is devoted to organic search engine optimization, I will try to point each of you to some sessions that you may want to consider at [...]- 2007Oct23Receiving Our First Cool Analog Spam
Most everyone is used to getting junk mail and a metric ton of email spam, but today at the Vizion offices we received our first unsolicited physical letter airmailed all the way from India. Addressed to “The Chairman, Vizion Interactive, Inc.” from our new friend Kishan Jalan in Jharkhand.
He was kind enough to send us a couple of flyers to hang in the high traffic areas of the office relating to the “true & best education” relating to saving women and “innocents” from wrong education.
We’re not quite clear on what the “wrong education” is and what the “right education” is – the english portions of our new poster are choppy at best, but in theory it seems like a good cause. Whitney Houston told us a while back that the “children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way” who are we at Vizion to disagree?Until next time – “Only Satyug” to save the children and innocents,
- 2007Oct18Branding Versus SEO
As promised, this is a continuation of the post entitled, “Branding Experts Clash with SEO.” I introduced the problem in that post, and I’d like to provide an example of Branding versus SEO in the real world.
Let’s take a look at Helio. For those of you not familiar with the brand, Helio is an MVNO, or in plain English, they are a company who markets really cool cell phones to teenagers and young 20s, and their service plans piggy back on the Sprint mobile network. It’s actually a very difficult industry to succeed in, when you consider that a majority of their fees go to Sprint for service. They charge enough over the standard Sprint fee to make a profit, but they have to compete with every other cell phone company on the market, including Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T.
They accomplish this goal by providing phones with extra features and cool designs and some marketing genius. In every Helio Ocean radio commercial I’ve heard, they always say, “Don’t call it a cell phone, call it an Ocean!” Even in traditional marketing circles, they realize that they have to mention the term cell phone, even [...]
- 2007Oct16Branding Experts Clash with SEO
One of the most common issues we face with clients is the mental disconnect between branding and best practices for on-page optimization. Your branding expert will typically come from a traditional marketing background, where branding for print, radio, and television was standard. In those marketing mediums, audiences everywhere are exposed to the terms and phrases you create to express your brand. With enough repetition, the public becomes comfortable with newly branded terms and taglines. Some of these creative new terms are even adopted in common language. That’s when a company really concretes itself within a culture and takes a place of accepted prominence.
Marketing online is a completely different beast. The internet is not like television. Everyone is not exposed to the exact same commercial advertisements. Each person is visiting a variety of websites according to their own choosing, preference, and ability to search.
If you or someone within your marketing division has yet to accept this truth, let’s waste no more time. YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO MARKET YOURSELF FOR SEARCH in order to compete with other companies online. Unless your visitor knows exactly where to go to find what they want, they will use a search engine to find the best [...]
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