Branded SEO for Better Rankings

Making your mark in SEO...

Last week, Greg made a strong case for maintaining brand continuity between offline and paid search marketing efforts. But what about maintaining that brand continuity between offline and organic search? Now, if you’re not ranking for your own brandname(s), then you have problems that are bigger than this blog post (i.e. you’ve probably been penalized for black hat tactics). But there are other ways that brand continuity can inform your SEO strategy and help you achieve better rankings overall….

5 Ways To Get The Most Out of Your New Online Marketing Platform

Are you new to the world of online marketing platforms? Are you just getting started and not quite sure where to begin? More and more advertisers are enjoying the benefits of online marketing platforms. In fact, it’s hard to find large-scale agencies and direct advertisers who do not leverage a platform these days.

As someone who’s been enjoying and leveraging online marketing platforms for over 7 years, I’m thrilled to share 5 tips on getting the most out of your new online marketing platform. Leverage these tips and your new platform could pay for itself in a matter of weeks!…

How to Maintain “Brand Continuation” Between Offline and Search Engines

PPC and Offline Mix Well TogetherWe all live in a day and age where everyone and everything is digitally connected. If we watch something on TV, or read something in print, or hear something on the Radio, our natural thing to do is to go online and search for it. This is this “comfortable behavior”, something we are accustomed to, which only increases the importance of connecting the “offline” with the “online” in order to continue the flow of continuous messaging. More importantly, THIS IS BRANDING. It’s the perfect marriage that seems to get better overtime, kinda like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Unfortunately, if the Marketers to do not embrace the Brand Continuation, then the marriage will have some rough patches. So in this post, I will provide a few tips to keep that marriage living  “long and prosper”…

Using PPC to Find New SEO Opportunities

In many ways, it makes sense to treat paid and organic search as two completely separate beasts. For example:

  • Both PPC and SEO require their own set of expertise and have their own KPIs
  • PPC yields more short-term/immediate results, while SEO is a long-term strategy (it takes time to rank organically)
  • SEO allows you to build long-term equity because your rankings do not depend on whether you’re bidding on keywords and impressions
  • User who click on paid listings are not necessarily the same users who click on organic ones

The list can go on, but the point is that it’s easy/tempting to want to treat the two channels as distinct. However, because both PPC and SEO target users through the same medium (i.e. search engines), the two can be coordinated to support each other and maximize results. Specifically, PPC efforts can be used to enrich and inform your SEO strategy….

Tips on How to Spread your PPC Budget across Multiple Engines.

Regardless of an advertisers monthly budget, and the fact that Google owns roughly 65%+ of the market, there is still that extra 34+% of an audience that should not be forgotten. Now, with that said, this does not mean an immediate sharing of the budget pie to other platforms with the expectation of equal ROAS%. In fact, it’s not so much about the “how much” to allocate, but rather “what campaigns” should we allocate that spend to….

Is Right Media Shooting Themselves in the Foot?

Sometimes I read a news item and ask myself whether the company making the announcement is making a brilliant move or a huge mistake. The road to business success is paved with risks of all types, so you really never know until the results come in.

This morning I had one of those moments when I saw that ad exchange Right Media has reportedly decided to take a step back and require that everyone buying inventory through a DSP must now have their own seat on the exchange.

Of course, obtaining a seat is no easy task and only a select few advertisers can achieve the minimum requirements to take part in the exchange. Today, advertisers can benefit from DSP’s seats which gives them access to all inventory.

While the entire industry is moving in the direction of making inventory more readily available to all advertisers, Right Media, who admittedly control a significant portion of RTB inventory, has apparently decided to go the other way and try to hold on to what’s left of the direct sales approach with large advertisers, rather than open up inventory to all buyers. Only time will tell whether this was a flash of genius on their part, considering how important they are and how much inventory they control. I’ll be very curious to see how this plays out and whether this rumor is based in reality.

Read more on adexchanger.com:

Yahoo! Begins Requiring Right Media Seats for Demand-Side Platform’s Advertisers.

Bid Rules, or Adwords Optimizers: Which works better?

When we attend trade shows, the staff at Acquisio is often asked one simple question: “Why should I use Acquisio’s Bid Rules, when Adwords has these cool optimizers that I can just turn on?”

To answer the question, it helps to have an understanding of the design goals for each module. The Adwords Conversion Optimizer, the Budget Optimizer and Acquisio’s Campaign Automation all control MaxCPC bidding, but for different purposes….

Display Network Strategies to Get The Most out of your Budget

The Google Display Network is making a HUGE comeback and Advertisers are migrating back to that platform. In fact, Google’s Display Network Revenue increased by 28% and CPC’s increase by 5% from last year.

However, spending these ad dollars effectively requires a deeper understanding of data and putting together solid strategies  that will continue to improve the ROAS%. Even with Google’s revenue increase, there are still flaws in the system that do not benefit the advertisers and it’s up to the PPC marketer to identify them and start taking advantage of all of the targeting options available….

The Importance of Text Ad Testing During The PPC Launch Phase

When we sit down and draft a new PPC Strategy, the thought of Multivariate Text Ad Testing during the launch phase is probably not on the radar. The typical “rule of thumb” would be to wait a few months to gather some results and then draft a Text Ad Strategy to be implemented on all or specific campaigns/adgroups. However, I often wonder why this testing should wait? Wouldn’t it be nice to know which Text Ad convert better and/or have higher CTR% rates?

In this blog post, I will discuss the importance of drafting a Text Ad Strategy as soon as the campaigns start. If an advertiser is going to spend PPC dollars, why not learn something from DAY 1….

How to Meet New Clients at Trade Shows and Conferences

Working the booth...

Trade shows, like Ad:Tech New York 2011 which takes place this week, are excellent venues to meet face to face with other industry professionals. But the main reason to attend a conferences is to meet potential new clients.

More often than not, however, the results of biz dev networking at conferences can be a little disappointing. After all, how do you sort through the thousands of faces and find the ones that are the most likely to be receptive to your offering? And how do you ensure that your conference leads turn into real business so that you can keep traveling to all the shows you want to attend?

Obviously, one way to do this is to exhibit, but having a booth can be extremely costly. So let’s look at how to work a conference on the cheap, as a simple conference attendee. Here are a few tips.