From the SEO Strategist:

I hate to say it, but it’s not really good enough to be number one for organic search anymore; paid advertising needs to be a part of your search strategy. When a client says to me, “I want to be number 1 for all my keywords,” they actually mean they want to be number 4. There are at least 3 other listings that will steal upwards of 64% of the clicks – at least for keyword phrases with commercial intent. So, as an SEO Strategist, I’ve resigned to the fact that I should probably discuss with PPC Strategists about how the paid campaigns for my clients perform. I want to know if those clicks they’ve been stealing are converting or not. The PPC Strategist has a whole minefield of interesting insights at their fingertips, and figuring out which keywords work and which are duds are all part of my plan for world domination.

From the PPC Strategist:

While I’d like to think that PPC is awesome because it’s easy to control, takes effect quickly, and takes the top of the search result pages, it’s not the be all and end all of search marketing. Organic listings, and other information snippets appear on results page and drive on average 64% of visits to a web page. Clearly beating paid search as a traffic driver. Also, while paid search ads are accompanied by a little “ad” button designating it as a paid placement, SEO isn’t seen as advertising and is perceived as trustworthy by the public.

See that little ad bubble in the left hand corner of the PPC ad. Yes, that clearly designates it as an advertisement which dissuades some users from clicking on it. Sure internally I can know this is all above board, but it is like comparing your favorite garage band to an auto-tuned pop singer, one has a lot more authenticity.

Come Together, Right Now

With these views of SEO and PPC in mind we’re going to examine how the two departments can complement each other.

Keyword Research

Both PPC and SEO Strategists do keyword research before and during a campaign, so why not share those keyword insights with each other? Follow these steps to ensure clear keyword communication between departments: 1) The SEO specialist creates a “keyword map” report that details the keywords for which your site is already ranking and the corresponding landing pages for those keywords. This takes a bit of reverse-engineering in Google Analytics and other keyword data sources, but it is a necessary evil in this era of (not provided) keyword data loss. 2) The SEO Strategist also does some additional keyword research to find new keyword ranking opportunities and maps those keywords to the appropriate landing pages. 3) Then the SEO Strategist sends the keyword map to the PPC strategist. The PPC strategist can use this keyword map as a seed keyword list for building out campaigns. 4) After testing keywords to find over- and under-achievers, the PPC Strategist should send the results to the SEO. An SEO might try to rank for “keyword A” but if the PPC finds that “keyword B” is actually kicking ass, maybe the SEO would like to know that. This report which is pulled from the AdWords UI can be used to find out what queries are actually generating actions on a web site, but most importantly it can be used to find synonyms or other variations of keywords that were not included in the original keyword map or PPC campaign. With 20% of daily search queries being questions that have never been asked before, relying on a static keyword list leaves opportunities on the table. Review the search query report thoroughly to see what keywords could be added to a PPC account, or built out for SEO pages.

Improve Loading Speed and Overall Quality Score

Quality score is rated on a 1- 10 scale and determined by several factors such as keyword click-through rates and page loading times. If a page loads slowly, then your ads will cost more and your organic rankings will suffer. So the SEO and the PPC Strategists should do everything in their power to make the site as freakishly fast as possible. 1) The SEO Strategist should communicate with the PPC Strategist if they suspect that certain pages are suffering from slow load times. A PPC Strategist can then see if those pages have low quality scores.

2) The SEO Strategist can investigate page speed issues using Google PageSpeed Insights, YSlow, and other tools. 3) The SEO Strategist or a developer can then implement the fixes necessary. If a page loads slowly due to render-blocking JavaScript or CSS, then those should load asynchronously. Or maybe some static resources simply need to have expiry dates set so that browsers will load cached content. 4) Once page speed issues are addressed, the PPC should measure for improved click-through rates and higher quality scores.

Optimize a Landing Page Using PPC

Not only are the elements that drive clicks testable, but PPC can be harnessed to test post-click behavior as well. Since AdWords can send traffic to multiple landing pages via the same ad, a PPC Strategist can see what elements on a page influence KPIs for a particular keyword. For example, an ad group can be set up with two versions of the same ad that point to different landing pages. In this manner the page headline, call to action, layout, images, or other page elements can be tested. The findings from the PPC team can be used to inform SEO efforts. For example, if a PPC Strategist notices that Landing Page A is converting at a breakneck speed, then the SEO Strategist can take some cues and re-design the organic landing pages to follow suit.

Make Friends with AdWords and Webmaster Tools

When you link AdWords and Webmaster Tools together, beautiful things can happen. Have you ever wondered whether your organic listing is more effective if you also have a paid listing? Or if your paid listings are cannibalizing your organic listings? These questions can be answered by looking at the “Paid & Organic” dimension report within Google AdWords. This report pulls data from Google Webmaster Tools for organic searches, impressions, and click-through rates, and compares that data to AdWords keywords you’re bidding on. This helps you to look holistically at your integrated SEO and PPC campaigns. 1) The PPC Strategist should pull a monthly report of the “Paid & Organic” dimension report and send it to the SEO Strategist. The two strategists should look for insights such as the performance of keywords where both organic and paid ads show for a given keyword. 2) The PPC Strategist should determine if any changes need to be made in terms of bidding strategy based on the report. Look especially at keywords where “Organic only shown” as new keyword ideas. 3) The SEO Strategist should determine if any changes in SEO strategy should be made. Pay attention particularly to “Ad shown only” keywords where there were a significant number of clicks – this may indicate a qualified keyword to target.

Setting up Site Search

Setting up Google Site Search in Google Analytics allows PPC and SEO Strategists to see what users look for in the site search box. This can help you glean additional keyword info and help you understand what your users can’t find. For example, if 85% of users search for “blue penguin,” and you do, in fact, sell blue penguins but the product is buried under Blue Items > Penguins, then maybe it’s time to feature your blue penguins on the home page.

1) The PPC Strategist can use this information to bid on new keywords and drive them to a page that speaks to what they seek. 2) The SEO Strategist can use this information to determine which keywords are important to users that they can’t easily find, and then use that information to suggest on-page SEO improvements, new pages, and/or site structure revisions.

Testing Page Titles

One of the many benefits of PPC is that it allows marketers to test messaging. Use this if you launch new content and would like to see what messaging resonates most with your audience, or test specific offers, promotions, or value propositions. SEO Strategists can get in on the action too. Ask your PPC colleague to write two ads for a given term with the exact same copy except for the title. Then set Google AdWords to rotate the ads evenly until a winner is decided. Sit back and watch the results come in. In the AdWords interface you will be able to see which title performs better in terms of click-through rate. This indicates that there is more interest for this specific offer. Google Analytics can also assist in this effort too. Go to Analytics > AdWords > Campaign and set the secondary dimension to “ad content.” This way you will be able to see post-click metrics such as bounce rate time, time on site, and pages per session. Now you will be able to determine which ad after driving a user to a page actually kept them there. This isn’t possible with just SEO alone, but is a great example of how SEO Strategists can leverage the unique ability that AdWords offers PPC Strategists. As you can see from the example below Ad 1 had a significantly lower bounce rate and kept users on the site for a longer period of time. Consider utilizing the copy in Ad1’s headline in and SEO title tag.

Test New Geographic Markets and Demographics

And last but not least, PPC Strategists can help SEO Strategists by testing new markets and demographics with their laser sharp geo-targeting. PPC is helpful for businesses that are testing new markets to decide if there is enough demand for their products/services before they invest money and resources into new markets, and/or determine if your site would benefit from a long-term international SEO strategy. A properly executed international SEO strategy can take up a lot of time and resources. PPC in international markets, however, can be properly set up and executed within a few hours, if performed by an experienced PPC manager. 1) A PPC Strategist can set up a separate campaign for the country, region, city, or even ZIP code that you are interested in targeting. After testing the new campaign to see if you can achieve average or below-average CPA, the PPC Strategist can then send the findings to the SEO Strategist for implementation. 2) The SEO Strategist should not rely on estimated search volumes alone as an indicator of whether targeting a new region will be effective. Instead, wait until after a PPC campaign has launched to determine if targeting a new region will be successful.

SEO + PPC = Money

As you can see, there are several opportunities where SEO and PPC Strategists can work together to glean richer, more relevant data that can help them refine their search strategies.

This blog is a great example of the magic that can be made when two aspects of search marketing come together. The ironic thing is that this kind of inter-departmental information sharing rarely happens. Why? We think it is because it is possible to be successful within one’s own department. It is possible to carry out an effective SEO or PPC strategy without discussing these topics with a co-worker. And yet, as this article has pointed out, there are so many ways in which we  can teach and learn from each other! We hope this post inspires you to break out a six-pack and make yourself comfortable at your friendly SEO/PPC person’s desk and get to work. Also read this article about How to Use PPC to Bolster Your SEO, Inspired by Elizabeth Marsten’s Mozinar.

Although we can’t post this from two different people, this was a joint blog by both PPC Strategist, Laura Oden, and SEO, Kaitlin McMichael.

The post PPC and SEO — Shouldn’t They Get Along? appeared first on Portent.

Still, despite her best attempts at teaching me the value of plus signs, quotes and brackets, some habits die hard.

The wide net of broad match, though often shunned in favor of more stringent match types, still has its place in the world of paid search. However, as Google and Bing-Hoo race to loosen the elasticity of these matches, wrestling your matched queries into submission becomes a river of tears labor of love. Fortunately, there are ways to process low-relevance queries in bulk without need for any scripting chops or a surplus of free time.

Enter Fuzzy Lookup.

Fuzzy Lookup is an add-in for Microsoft Excel that simplifies comparative text analysis and allows for variable thresholds of output similarities. Such a tool has countless potential applications for anyone working with large sets of data. For our purposes, Fuzzy Lookup will enable us to prune our search queries using our bidded keywords as matching criteria. The output can then be used to build large sets of negative keywords and, ultimately, maximize the quality of traffic being driven by non-exact keywords.

Before we get to work, you’ll need to download and install the Fuzzy Lookup add-in from Microsoft. Once finished, open a blank Excel workbook and look for the Fuzzy Lookup icon in the ribbon of your Excel window. Salvation lies within.

To populate your workbook, grab a list of your bidded keywords and the corresponding search queries. It doesn’t matter if you pull these from reports or just download them directly from the AdWords UI, but keep your initial selection to one Ad Group. This method is capable of processing much larger lists of keywords, but a smaller selection will serve you well when setting up for the first time.

Paste each list in a separate worksheet, using descriptive headers like “Bidded Keywords” and “SearchQueries”. Once both are in place, highlight either list and click the “Format as Table” button in the Excel ribbon. Which style of table you choose is entirely up to you, but do remember to indicate that your table has headers. Do this for both lists, and then click back to your Bidded Keywords worksheet.

You should now have two worksheets, once with a table of raw search queries, and the other with a table of bidded terms. I know how exhausted you must be, but mop that e-sweat from your iBrow and let’s see this one through. “TEAM” on three!

There’s a tab in the Excel menu titled “Fuzzy Lookup”, and a button by the same name behind it. When you click the “Fuzzy Lookup” button, it searches out all tables within the workbook, regard less of how many worksheets are present. A sidebar control panel will appear, and you should see the Fuzzy Lookup has already Identified your tables.

I generally keep the Bidded Keywords table as my Left Column, and my Search Queries table as my right.

Now, because I have 23 queries that I’m looking to match, I’ve set the Number of Matches to exactly 23. Experiment with lowering this number as you explore the tool and see the difference in the results that Fuzzy Lookup returns. I also keep my “Similarity Threshold” just West of center at around 0.33. Again, the specific results you’re after may be hiding behind a different set of conditions, so give yourself some time to try out alternative settings.

Finally, if my Bidded Keywords table is on Sheet 1 A:A, then I’ll highlight Sheet 1 B1 and click “Go”.

Note: Make sure the “FuzzyLookup.Similarity” option is checked.

Above is a picture of the output I receive using my lists of Bidded Keywords and Search Queries. For a little extra flair, I’ve added color scales as conditional formatting.

With this information, I can use the similarity score both to identify similar terms I may consider actively bidding on, and to identify low-relevance queries that could find a home in a negative keyword list somewhere. No pulling and comparing reports, no manual examination of hundreds of queries, just a free plugin, some swift fingers, and a lot of leftover time.

So what do to with that time? Here’s a thought: VLookups. Try adding in engine-side performance data (CTR, CPA, Impressions, etc) and see what correlations you find. What is the similarity threshold beyond which your CTR takes a dive? What are the low-similarity but high-impression terms that are artificially deflating your overall CTR?

Go forth, geek out, and keep it fuzzy!

The post Harvesting Bulk Negative Keywords with Excel appeared first on Portent.

Once upon a time I started out as what I thought was a “paper clip” marketer. (Turns out that’s actually a “pay per click” marketer, as I was gently corrected by a Google SERP.) Since then, I’ve been smashing my way through paid search accounts at Portent. By working in an integrated Internet marketing agency, however, I’ve been exposed to SEOs and their trials and tribulations – which is how I ended up with a more intimate knowledge of what SEOs care about and what they don’t.

Since no one really reads prologues anyway (you’re all skimming right now), I’ll shut up and get to it. Here are some basic how-tos for the SEOs out there to leverage for themselves.

Quality Score

Quality Score (QS) is Google’s measurement of a keyword’s relevancy at the visible level, on a scale of 1-10. There are Quality Scores for other parts of an AdWords account, but the one we can see and in a sense, control, is at the keyword level. QS is determined by a bevy of factors, chiefly click through rate. QS plays a large role in how much your CPC (cost per click) will be, average ad position (sometimes), and impression rate.

As a result of this important metric, there are several tools and measurement options at our disposal to help improve QS within an ad group that can also be used for SEO purposes.

Load Time & Relevancy

Within the AdWords interface under the Keywords tab, there is a little “bubble” that when hovered over will tell you what the QS of that keyword is, if the keyword is displaying with ads, expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. As you can see in the first example, this is an ideal set up for this particular keyword and the ad and landing page associated with it.

This second example shows you the opposite:

Why you care: if you’re struggling with certain keyword choices you’ve made for your SEO keyword list, take a look at what Google is interpreting for that keyword in relevancy with the landing page and well, everything else. If they hate it there, you might have your answer.

Additionally, when a new PPC ad is added (paused or not), Google crawls through the destination URL to assign a baseline QS. If the page for the destination URL is not live yet- the ad will get kicked back. Same goes for pages that are too slow to respond to Google’s virtual “click” – we’ve had many a time where site speed played a factor in calculating QS and resulted in the ad being disapproved due to site speed. So just as site speed affects SEO, so does it affect PPC.

Compare QS to SEO Keywords

This one is pretty straightforward: download the list of keywords from AdWords with Quality Scores and compare it to your SEO keyword list. If you’re seeing low scores (under 5) for terms you treasure, you might start digging a little deeper. If you can’t buy your way to the top with that term, it may be indicative of potential success, or rather lack thereof, for your SEO terms.

You can also pull a host of other information from the keywords tab to compare your SEO keyword list to, including the most important: average CPC. If you’re paying $26 PER CLICK for a certain term and it’s important to you (especially if QS is low), pouring some effort into the organic side to cut spend on the PPC side could very well result in your obtaining hero status.

Using Ad Copy

Ad copy, while shorter, still provides a place in which to test things out much faster than SEO. For example, test title tags! A PPC headline is only 25 characters, but the ad itself in total is 95 characters. Combine an ad headline and body copy, and you have yourself a bonafide title tag with which you can test response rates – from CTR to conversion rate.

Same goes for meta descriptions – 95 characters of space to find out what searchers will respond to when presented with a field of options.

A PPC ad could gather the amount of info needed to make a good decision for SEO in a matter of days or weeks, instead of the months it could take for SEO changes to take full effect.

Another feature of ad copy is that in PPC, the PPC marketer can choose which sitelinks to show alongside the ad. From as few as 1 (though I don’t recommend less than 4) up to 10, a PPC ad can show a swath of title tags and give you individual sitelink metrics in the AdWords interface. This allows you to measure CTR, impressions, and conversion rate. While you might not be able to select your own sitelinks in SEO, you can see in Webmaster Tools what is being chosen – this can help drive your decisions on which sitelinks to suppress instead.

Keyword Research

Oh man. I’m sorry. This puppy is also sorry.

Enhanced Campaigns

This year, Google AdWords rolled out a very large change. While it provided more insight into certain areas of PPC account management, it darkened others – primarily the ability to target tablet devices separately from mobile or desktop.

Its effect in the short term (at least for many advertisers) was to increase their average CPC as tablet device traffic was merged with desktop. The emphasis on mobile was made even more apparent as Google’s default CPCs were the same for mobile devices as desktops – unless they were manually changed on “upgrade.” The change also made it impossible to just “opt out” of mobile – the only workaround was to set a “mobile bid modifier” at the campaign level to -100%.

Yes, you read that right. It’s very convoluted.

Why you care: For all the griping and nonsense associated with the change, the data that will come from some of the new features will be of interest to you.

Besides the above-mentioned ability to see sitelink performance on a per sitelink basis, you can now also bid for specific geographies. This will allow you to see if sitelinks in areas you *think* are more important to local SEO efforts actually are. Geographic bidding makes it so you don’t need a separate campaign for a specific geographic location anymore; instead, it allows you to nest all within a single campaign, adjusting bids up or down depending on your preference. See what people in a suburb, city, metro area or congressional district are responding to and align your local SEO efforts accordingly.

For you local SEOs out there, watch out for the AdWords Express or “Premium Features” of the Google Places for business area. This is essentially a dressed down version of AdWords with less control. You don’t choose keywords, you choose categories, no negative keywords (just categories), broad match only and no direct conversion tracking. If you want to “boost” local SEO on Google Places, carefully weigh your options, as the premium product is technically PPC and you may be better off with a full (yet, simple) AdWords account.

The Keyword Planner

Okay, so I know that technically keywords are passé now, but if you perhaps wanted to get an estimate on what Google thinks is out there based on the last 30 days of searches, you can. As most of you are probably aware the Traffic Estimator and Keyword Tool were merged together to create the Keyword Planner. Keep in mind, however, it was meant for PPC, so you’ll be asked to fill in certain fields and click certain tabs as if you were actually trying to build out a new ad group (even though you’re not).

Tips:

• Yeah, you’re going to have to sign in to use it. If there’s an MCC (My Client Center) login that your PPC team uses, get logged in with that and navigate to the client account. Technically, it doesn’t matter what AdWords account you do the research in as long as you don’t save.

• Click the keyword button in the “segment by” area to see individual keyword estimates (ad group is the default).

• Enter a fake bid. Go with $5 or higher for high volume or tech industry related terms. Go with $1-3 for the less tech-y or trafficked. This will get you into your desired range of a better “ad position” for more ideal volumes.

• If the average ad position isn’t showing as 1-3, increase the bid. You’re more likely to see closer to total volumes available for those terms. So in the above example, I’d increase the bid to $5 and see what average positions appear.

• Double check the settings on the left rail: all languages (not English) is a default, same with USA targeting, and Google search (not search partners – you want this, as search partners won’t apply to you in the same sense.)

• Change match type (broad is the default) with the “edit match types” drop down button.

Hopefully this post has provided something that sparks a whisper of innovation that you can run off with and claim as your own. Godspeed.

The post Heads Up, Internet Marketers: How to Use PPC to Bolster Your SEO [Inspired by My Mozinar!] appeared first on Portent.

Well it finally happened. In what they claim is a move to make search data more secure, Google has begun to encrypt all searches, effectively placing all organic traffic into the (not provided) category. This means business owners will never see the keywords people used to get to their site.

We’ve already gone over what this means for SEO but, since big changes like this are always accompanied by big opinions, I decided to ask around Portent and see what people here thought about this new era of SEO. With that, let’s meet the players:

Ian Lurie, CEO, Founder, Dictator. Probably already knew this was happening from some important-people news feed.

Elizabeth Marsten, Senior Director of Search. The Commander Riker to Ian’s Darth Vader aboard the Galactica.

Josh Patrice, Director of SEO. “Directs” the SEO team through the troubled waters of the industry. Recently lost compass.

Michael Wiegand, Senior PPC & Google Analytics Strategist. Still has all his keyword data.

Aviva Jorstad, Director of Accounts. Courier of terrible and depressing news from SEOs to clients.

Ken Colborn, SEO & Analytics Strategist. Informed team of Google’s update by loudly sobbing into his keyboard like a little, baby girl.

Travis Brown, Offsite SEO Strategist. Couldn’t be happier that Google is making life miserable for other SEOs.

Nick Bernard, SEO Strategist. Lives in Montana. Keyword research process almost certainly involves fly fishing in some form.

Marianne Sweeny, Senior Search Strategist. Has been warning colleagues, clients, and people walking on the sidewalk about this for years.

Matthew Henry, SEO Developer. Half robot, half cyborg, half wizard.

David Portney, SEO Strategist. (bio not provided)

Kiko Correa, PPC Strategist. Uses the word “clicks” in almost every sentence, except when talking about “cliques.”

George Freitag, SEO Strategist. Author of this article, making his opinions the most important.

Where were you when you found out about Google’s switch?

Aviva: At the airport bar in DC, checking Facebook on my phone. Ian had shared the SEL article.

Elizabeth: At my desk, smashing through emails.

David: Working at my desk.

Michael: Probably eating a sandwich.

Matthew: Sitting in my flooded apartment trying to roll out some code.

Ken: I heard about it first from Twitter and the angry mob of SEOs declaring the end of the world.

Travis: At my desk across from THE Ken Colborn during a beautifully dreary morning.

George: Eavesdropping on Travis and Ken.

Kiko: Looking at a search term report in AdWords.

What were your initial thoughts on the move?

Marianne: “No surprises here.”

Josh: I don’t think that we can print my initial thoughts. This is a family blog.

Aviva: The writing’s been on the wall for nearly two years. We knew this was coming.

Elizabeth: Well that’s a hell of a thing… but I’m PPC oriented, so it really doesn’t affect me. If anything, I just got more useful.

Matthew: I figured they would do this eventually, but I was surprised they did it so soon, and so completely.

Michael: It’s a token gesture on Google’s part to their searcher base. But ultimately, one that’s likely to garner them respect outside of the search community.

Ken: I was surprised at first. While it was a move that I was expecting, I didn’t think it would happen this soon. I thought it was going to be a more gradual move over the next year.

Nick: Like most people I’m sure, I’m surprised they just flipped the switch and turned it secure for everyone. I thought they would drag it out some more in little increments, like “This month, all searches from BLACKBERRIES are secure!” (Were they already?)

Travis: Google has been moving towards this direction for a while, and it was only a matter of time. While there are going to be negative side effects and an adjusting period to having no data, the future will be better because we will not be slowly hemorrhaging data for years to come. Instead, it is all gone now, and we have to adjust now. In the end, it is going to be more “wheat from chaff” for agencies.

Kiko: Thank goodness I work in PPC. Total job security… for me.

How do you think this will impact the industry?

Ian: Keyword rankings and data became a poor metric several years ago, when personalized search hit. If you haven’t already changed your focus to true KPIs that impact the business, and started treating SEO as a single channel in a larger strategy, then this would be a reallllly good time to start.

Matthew: People will scream bloody murder for a while, then everyone will eventually calm down and adapt to make use of what information we do have.

Josh: Well, the levels of panic are going to rise in the near future, but if we’re really doing our best to optimize a site, then we don’t necessarily need this data. Sure, it’s helpful; we can build content around long-tail queries, we can chase changes in the lexicon for a site or a product or a category, and we can make assumptions around our audience. In the end, most of the time what we as SEOs really need to be doing is putting the right content on the right pages. I feel that we do that already.

Aviva: There will be freak-outs. There will be outrage. For content-focused, whole-brained Internet marketing agencies like Portent, not much – in fact, in many ways it sets us apart from the pack. My point is, thinking in terms of individual keywords is really, really limiting. As marketers, this move is exciting because it forces companies to be more strategic and holistic with their online marketing efforts. At Portent, we’ve always pushed clients to start from a higher level, and approach SEO as an integrated effort that is part of everything they do online. Now, we have more leverage to push high-quality, link-attracting, and social-buzz-getting content. We have more leverage to talk about user experience and site speed. We have more leverage to stop the obsession with keywords and rankings and look at overall visibility. Can you tell I’m excited?

Marianne: Without organic keyword data, keyword research will have to change as ad behavior is markedly different from organic data. User experience practices will become instrumental in optimizing websites for organic ranking.

Elizabeth: After the crying dies down and we all remember that Google is a privately held company that can do anything they want to in reality, 3rd party tools are going to become a booming industry, anyone who can do correlation fun (i.e. with paid search keywords) is going to enjoy job security, and I think we’re going to see a lot more innovation over all. New tools, new technologies, new math even.

Travis: Rankings may not return as the KPI to watch, but they will continue to be an indicator of performance. Google could get more people running advertisements or paying for the data. Using an analytics platform to appropriately segment attribution and measure page-level performance will be even more important. From a link building perspective, it is a non-issue. There are more interesting KPIs for off-site to judge performance, and anchor text should already be diversified.

Michael: SEOs will look for more creative ways to siphon data from PPC. Ironically, there’s a new report in that shows click-through balance on a given term when you have paid running, when you have organic listing or when you have both. Additionally, Google Analytics’ eventual move to tracking users instead of cookies will render a lot of what we used to ascertain through search queries – customer intent, namely – useless, as we’ll get a much bigger window into how many visits and influences lead to a purchase. We’ll need to start solving for the entire marketing mix and not just one keyword on one channel.

Google claims that they are doing this for enhanced security. Do you feel there is any legitimacy to this reasoning?

Josh: Ha.

Ian: I question Google’s statement that this is privacy-motivated, given that they still store the data (I’m sure) and they still show all AdWords clicks.

Kiko: Did someone say enhanced? Seriously though, are you implying Google would have an ulterior motive behind hiding keyword info behind a pay wall? $hocking.

David: At SMX Advanced 2013, Matt Cutts passionately argued this as a justifiably important protection for searchers, but that seems hypocritical when the data is available if you pay for it via AdWords advertising.

Matthew: Nope. I think they are withdrawing this information because they have no real motive to give it to us, and because the information makes it easier to manipulate.

Elizabeth: No, it’s crap. That’s the kind of thing that’s thought up by a scriptwriter for a movie or TV show to cover up the real reason. I’ve got cable. There have to be other mitigating factors and one of them (it wouldn’t surprise me) has to be around the fatigue of fighting spam and jerks trying to “game” the system. Take away the stuff they’re using to do it and you’re left with fewer options. Like creating good content for people.

Michael: While I think they’ve taken an appropriate response to NSA activity in general and in crying out for more government transparency, I think the query data they’re storing to benefit their AdWords user base is at odds with any legitimately good motives they might have on the privacy/security.

Aviva: User data is still available for sale. And we have encryption technologies that make it possible to protect users, which are or will soon be enabled anyway. So no, this has nothing to do with security.

Marianne: Google’s justification fig leaf of protecting privacy is very small and extremely thin. User privacy was never compromised as it was not accompanied by the data points of who and where. Also, Google still retains all user data for use at their end. How private is that? IMHO, the motivation for this move on the part of Google is all of that tantalizing Big Data and its richness of actual user behavior data.

Travis: Yes, there is legitimacy to the Big Bad Wolf’s reasoning. What is not legitimate is keeping the data for paying parties. To reinforce their claim, Google is moving towards more transparency by showing the amount of requests they receive from government agencies and probably would do more if they were legally able. Recently, there has been buzz about tracking users without cookies. How Google accomplishes that will be a huge hint at how they truly feel about privacy and whether they are walking the walk.

George: I do think that Google being able to state that they no longer give your search data to marketing agencies can play pretty well for them from a political standpoint. Even if it is a totally empty gesture.

Any final thoughts on the matter?

Ken: While we lose some valuable insights on keyword data, our main goal should stay the same: create great content that is truly useful to our customers.

Kiko: In all honesty this seems like a poorly motivated move by Google that will have an unintended positive impact on marketing. Crap marketers will still be crap, but have one less leg to stand on. After the initial shock of client expectations people doing the real quality work will have no problem getting the job done.

David: We just have to adapt accordingly. Search marketing will undergo radical changes as Google works toward its dream of a “Star Trek” computer and continues to serve itself and its shareholders, being a publicly traded company and all.

Matthew: The SEO industry has always had to adapt to squeeze as much use as possible out of very limited information. When we are given something useful, and then it is later taken away, it’s easy to fall into a sense of entitlement. “Google OWES us that keyword data!” but, of course, they don’t really owe us anything.

Michael: AdWords will still have a ton of data that’ll be useful for SEOs. Hopefully this’ll be the (albeit awful) thing that drives legitimate cooperation between organic and paid search folks for good. We’re in the same game and it’s been stupid of us to create these borders – blog posts about cannibalization, mainly – between our goals, which should be to grow search holistically.

Travis: ¡Viva la Rankings!

What were your thoughts about Google’s switch to secure? Do you have any questions? Any tips? Share your thoughts and stories below and keep the conversation going!

The post Team Portent Weighs In On the Loss of Organic Keywords appeared first on Portent.

• Google AdWords- Opportunities tab- Click it. AdWords makes suggestions for keywords based on the “opportunities” it sees. Simply click and add to the appropriate ad groups. Yahoo and MSN have keyword suggestion tools in the user interface as well, but we all know which one is the best to use.
• Google Keyword Tool– enter a keyword or URL of a landing page and let Google suggest to you what it thinks. The tool within the AdWords interface is easiest to use.
• Google Search Based Keyword Tool- Build a keyword list on actual search queries by combing through Google’s collection of searches around the keywords you enter.
• Google Trends- See what’s hot and what’s not. Use this tool to predict traffic increases, rising terms and like terms based on seasonality and popularity including news, geographic and language information. MSN has a similar tool called Keyword Forecast that also provides gender and age information- but with a much smaller keyword database to draw info from.
• Google’s Wonder Wheel- branch off onto tangents and discover additional niches or keywords to add.
• Google Analytics- Go to Traffic Sources and view all keywords and see what’s converting that you’re not already bidding on. Or, reverse the number of visits to be least to most and see what keywords are hanging around the bottom of the stack. There could be some inspiration in there.
• Webmaster Tools- Google, Yahoo and Bing all have Webmaster tools sets where you can login and see what people are coming to the site organically for (or not coming organically for) and pull out some negative keywords along with some potential keyword niches.
• Google Insights for Search– this may not bring up a lot of ideas since it’s based on the original keyword you typed in, but it will tell you what related searches are rising…and those could be worth adding!
• SEMrush– Check out what the competition is bidding on and beat, steal and top them at it. A paid service will show you the complete report, but the first few results are free!
• Search Suggest- Start typing in a keyword (slowly!) and let the search engine start suggesting searches for you. This is a great way to find negative keywords more than anything else, but a completed search may also show you suggested “related searches” in the sidebars or footer.
• Wordstream Keyword Niche Finder, Grouper and Keyword Tool
  

  The Niche Finder will take the keyword you entered and make suggestions for niches to try. So a “down pillows” search brings up niches like: feather, goose, alternative, wash and clean.
  The Grouper doesn’t actually suggest keywords, but will take a group of keywords that you paste in (perhaps a bunch you gleaned from one of the many other tools) and suggest how those keywords should be broken up into different groups for account structure purposes.
  The Keyword Tool makes keyword suggestions based on the keyword you input, very similar to Google’s keyword tools, simply another way of doing it organized by search frequency.

• Wordtracker Keyword Questions Tool– Users sometimes think search engines are crystal balls in which they should enter the questions. Find out what questions they’ve asked around your current keyword list.
• WordTracker has a free keyword suggestion tool that you can take for a spin. Granted their paid service is far more robust, but who can argue with free?
• MSN AdCenter Labs
  

  Search Funnels– Follow users as they continue to search and follow them through the conversion funnel. For example- someone searches for “Dell” and afterwards is likely to search for: bestbuy, gateway, ebay, hp and dell.com. It’s not the most robust tool, the more popular the category/industry, the more likely you’ll see useful insight.
  
  Keyword Group Detection– enter a keyword and let MSN show you other keywords that it considers to be similar to the one you entered. So “cheap airfare” pulls up a long list that includes “discount airfare, cheap tickets, plane tickets, airfare, cheap airlines.”
  Keyword Mutation– enter a keyword and check out all the different ways people misspell, mutilate or mutate keywords in their searches. It also picks up and presents alternate spellings.

• Run a search query report- A great place to find both negatives and longer tail terms, especially if you’re using any broad matches. Don’t go bigger than one campaign at a time though, keep it simple. Google & MSN have this as a reporting feature- Yahoo, you’ll have to ask a rep.
• Use a thesaurus or dictionary- they’re full of words. Lots of words.
• Use negatives to make positives- or just add to your negative keyword list with these 200+ negative keywords to consider!

Last year I did a post on Keyword Resource Tools that Aren’t Keyword Tools which is overshadowed by this post with the exception of using Ask.com as a keyword generation tool. If you want to learn more, you’ll have to check it out!
What keyword tools do you use?

The post 22 Free Keyword Tools for PPC and SEO appeared first on Portent.

I started using long tail keyword strategies well before Chris Anderson’s book arrived on the scene. Back then I called them embedded keywords. And yes, for the sarcastic readers, this was long before the Iraq war too. I coined this phrase because a more popular keyword was embedded into the longer search query.

Fast forward to the present.

Each year it seems a little more difficult to crack into the top rankings for long tail keywords. The traffic doesn’t appear as strong either. I have a few ideas about this:

1. The Internet and the Web have grown to the point where there are no long tails, at least not many useful ones. Web sites are competing for every conceivable term whether by intention or not.
2. With the growth of the Web comes greater competition and choice. As a side-effect of more offerings and variety, searchers are more likely to find what they want early on, without diving deep into the lower ranking results or querying more specific long tail searches.
3. Search engines produce better results. Again, this means people will more likely find the result they want earlier in their search efforts.

What do you think?

Are long tail keywords an endangered species? Are they passing on? Expiring? Going to meet their maker? Stiffening-up? Pushing-up daisies? Kicking the bucket? Shuffling of this mortal coil? Running down the curtain and joining the bleedin’ choir invisible?

The post Are Long Tail Keywords Dead? appeared first on Portent.

Google AdWords is a mystical beast sometimes, capable of dumbfounding and goring the best of us. My cost-per-click cohort, Elizabeth, kindly tipped us off to Google’s most recent Quality Score update – and it appears the latest changes are starting to affect the paid search landscape in a big way. For some, scores have dropped considerably, prices have gone up and general unrest has befallen bidders. With that said, it’s a good time to reiterate a few things at the crux of achieving good quality scores, especially given the apparent added weight Google is placing on certain key variables in their algorithm.

Keyword House Cleaning

Assuming you’re seeing a lot of “GREAT” to “OK” and “OK” to “POOR” trends, look closely at the CTR (click-thru rate) column in your ad groups. A quick correlation should reveal itself. If your keyword CTR looks poor over a long stretch of time – 1.5% might not necessarily be bad for your business if you’re still converting – Google will probably still treat it poorly. To that end, consider deleting any poorly performing keywords in an ad group (if they aren’t absolutely vital to your conversion rates).

Granulate Your Ad Groups

In the past, you could get away with keeping synonymous terms in the same ad group. Now, Google will ding you harder if you do. Let’s say you sell lodges in the Swiss Alps. Your keywords are mostly lodge related, your ads say lodge, your landing page says lodge; but you’d also like to bid on the synonyms – hotel, inn, bed and breakfast, etc. Failing to segregate those terms might not only cost your dearly on those terms, but AdWords might penalize all the other keywords in the ad group as well. So, keep them as organized as possible.

Boost Lander Relevance

In a perfect world, we’d have a landing page tailored for every ad group. Speaking practically, we can’t always add 10 new web pages every time we go on a keyword research binge. Be smart about where you point your ads. A good rule of thumb is to make sure your keyword (or a close variation thereof) appears at least once in your landing page. It doesn’t have to be saturated, but if you don’t see your keyword appearing on an important page, borrow a much-used SEO tactic: make copy recommendations to the people controlling site content.

The post The AdWords Quality Score Hammer Has Fallen, Now What? appeared first on Portent.

Ask your own question in the comments. Depending on how many questions I receive I’ll answer either all or the best ones in future blog posts.

How many PPC keywords should you buy?

Continuing the Portent PPC series, today’s insight is how to determine how many keywords you should have in any given ad group or campaign.

Ultimately, the actual number of appropriate keywords depends on your industry, but the rule of thumb is keep it simple and group PPC keywords related to your business appropriately.

One sure sign: if you have to run an Adwords Search Query Report every time you log into your Google account you’re most likely bidding on too many terms (unless you are Target or Amazon).  If it’s in the hundreds, it’s too many.

Too many keywords!

High volume keywords can create several thousand impressions each day. Break them out into their own campaigns to control costs and ease maintenance. Some examples are real estate, lawyer, cars, jewelry, bridal, furniture, and shoes.

If you must bid on a difficult to control PPC keyword, place it in a separate campaign. Make sure that you actually need that keyword and that it converts. This way you can control costs, exposure and filter out low quality clicks and visits. Ideally, you want to have no more than 20-25 keywords in an ad group. This will make it easier to not only see all the keywords on a single page in the PPC search engine’s interface, but also keep things neat and increase quality score potential.

The post PPC FAQ – Finding the Right Number of Keywords appeared first on Portent.

The post Make the Most of High Traffic Keywords appeared first on Portent.