While at the conference I had the opportunity to meet most of the staff at Hanapin Marketing. They were extremely friendly and very gracious hosts. I was actually surprised to hear that they had stopped offering other online marketing services eg, SEO. They were very adamant about specializing in PPC and how offering other services just distracted them from their PPC clients. I agree 100%, as specialization has always been the key to Vancouver PPC’s success. Although we still have SEO clients, we are not taking on any new SEO or Website Design clients in the future.

One of the best seminars was the real time landing page optimization. There was a panel of speakers, including Brad Geddes, who reviewed a hand full of landing pages right in front of our eyes. The interesting thing was that all the pages needed work. Some more than others, but the moral was that landing page testing should never stop.

Probably the funnest part of the seminar were the drinks at the end of the day. It was a good chance to meet a lot of cool PPC geeks. There were a few guys from Amsterdam, who had made the jump over the ocean just to be at the conference. Their agency was massive and had some pretty big banks on their client list. Then there were the team members from an online education company, who were awesome to have drinks with. One of their roadblocks was finding “good” PPC managers. I think this is a real problem in the industry because there isn’t enough formal training.

Even on the flights back from the conference I got to talk PPC. I met a guy from an agency in Utah, who’s agency was on the smaller side of things, but was still getting big results for his clients.

All in all it was a very good conference and I look forward to next year’s event in Texas.

1. Interest Targeting expanded

Interest targeting allows you to target people on the Google Display network based on interest categories. This feature works by tracking the behavior of people on the internet. If for example, you had been to multiple sports websites in the past 30 days, then it would be safe to say that you are interested in sports. Now interest targeting has been around for a while, but this was the first year that we saw huge results using it. Plus you can combine it with other targeting options to lazer target your ads based on behaviour.

2. Google + and +1 Button on Ads

The Google + was added to ads this year. It allows people to + ads that they like, giving Google another way to rate ads based on relevancy. Google wasn’t the first network to use this system, as Facebook has had this for years on their ads. It is still unclear to what extent Google + will affect your quality score, but in the future it could easily carry more wait.

3. Multi-Channel funnel analysis

Google Analytics now allows you to see multiple touch points in your funnel via Multi-Channel funnels. Before you were only able to see how many times your search ads were clicked before a conversion took place. Now you can see how social media, display and search results all interact in your conversion funnel.  Multi-channel funnel is just another way to help advertisers optimize their conversion funnel.

4. Automated Rules

Automated Rules allow you to set up rules to manage your pay per click account. In previous years these rules never worked very well however, this year they made some serious changes to the way they work. Rules can save you a lot of time and money if they are set up correctly.

5. Call Conversion Tracking

The addition of call tracking allows you to track “click calls” from mobile devices. For example say someone comes to your site via a mobile PPC ad, then once on your site they click on your phone number initiating a call. The original PPC ad would then get credit for the call and be give a call conversion.

If you would like helping setting up any of these new features contact us here.

For example say you upload a video to YouTube and it contains the latest Justin Bieber song in it. Well according to the new bill that would be copyright infringement and allow all of YouTube to be shut down. I can’t imagine an internet without YouTube.

Check out the video below for a better explanation of the bill.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Interest targeting is really cool because you can target people who have shown interest in a given topic over the past 30 days. As stated on the Adwords Blog, here is how it works, “[the] system looks at the types of pages a user visits, taking into account how recently and frequently those pages have been visited, and then associates their browser with relevant interest categories”.

Example of interest categories you can target:

Interest targeting is not to be confused with topic targeting, which allows you to target people who are viewing content that contains a desired topic. Topic targeting does not take into account the behavioral factors of recency and frequency. However, it uses the same categories to target topics.

The behavioural profiling is getting a bit scary because of the introduction of Google+. Google+ allows Google to incorporate your profile likes and interest, with the behavioural data from their Search and the Display network to amass huge amounts of data on YOU. This data is then used to better target you with ads. Honestly, I don’t have a problem with Google using the data to better target ads to me because at least I will see more relevant ads. However, I could see how this would freak the average person out.

I highly recommend trying out Interest targeting. We have found that conversion rates are quiet a bit higher than topic or contextual targeting.

Step 1: Get Busy Reading

Most people think that just because a book was written 5 years ago on internet marketing that it is completely outdated, but I would have to disagree. Although, the tools may have changed the fundamentals of SEO or PPC have not really changed. To rank well in Google you still need to optimize your onpage factors and get in bound links. For PPC there may be a ton of new tools and ad formats, but the keyword is still king and knowing the difference between exact and broad match keyword is still important. You will always need to know the history of internet marketing before you can really start seeing patterns in new mediums.

I have read all of these internet marketing books. Plus most can be found at your public library.

Step 2: Take Some Internet Marketing Courses

I would recommend learning PPC because you can master it in a shorter time frame than SEO plus all of the skills you learn in PPC will help you in SEO.

PPC:

• Go through the Adwords Learning Center and get Adwords certified
• Take an Advanced Adwords Seminar they are really good and Brad Geddes is a great teacher and will spend the time to answer all of your questions
• Bing also offers training for Adcenter PPC

SEO:

• The best Free SEO training I have found is the Challenge

Web Analytics:

• I just finished the Web Intelligence course at UBC and it was awesome. Plus the analytics evangelist Avinash Kayshik had a hand it its design. It won’t tell you how to use Google Analytics but it will teach all the theory you will ever need regardless of the web analytics platform.

Step 3: Stay Up to Date

The web is changing daily so you had better stay up to date or risk becoming obsolete by reading blogs. By no means are the following blogs an exhaustive list of internet marketing blogs, but they are my favorites that I follow daily. FYI if you are saying to yourself WOW that is a lot of reading, well not shit it is a lot of reading, but that is what it takes to be a professional internet marketer in today’s economy.

PPC:

• Inside Adwords
• Inside Facebook
• Adcenter Blog

SEO:

• SEOMoz
• Most SEO blogs overlap with their content so pick one you like and stick to it

Web Analytics:

• Occam’s Razor
• Webmaster Central Blog
• Google Analytics Blog

Step 4: Get Some In-House Experience

Go work for a web based company’s marketing department for a few years. You will learn a lot and plus it will allow you to get caught up with your internet marketing reading. Furthermore, you need time to apply all the theories you have learned from books, blogs and taking classes.

Step 5: Up to You…

At this point you can go work freelance, get into the affiliate game or find a higher paying job somewhere else. IMO I would highly recommend staying away from agency’s because the stress might just kill you and the lack of autonomy will hurt your learning…

1. Google to Facebook: The internet spotlight has switched from Google to Facebook this year. Thanks in part to the hugely successful feature film “The Social Network”, which I think for people outside of internet marketing actually helped them understand the magnitude of social media. Plus all the privacy issues helped to keep Facebook top of mind in the public’s eyes. However, Facebook still has a long way to go to before it can be a Google killer.

2. Social Media: The use of social media as an SEO tool is now officially in every SEO’s tool box. Even offline marketing has adopted social media. It seems like every commercial I see on TV has a Twitter and Facebook Icon in it, with a call to action saying “call or click for more information”.

3. Yahoo & Bing: The merger of Yahoo and Bing was a big announcement that took way to long to actually happen. Now that Yahoo and Bing have merged they have a combined market share of 28%, which for most advertisers finally makes it worth while to advertise on Adcenter.

4. Localization of Search: Google’s changes to the way that they display local search results now pushes non-local search results further down the page. You had better have a serious local search strategy in place for next year or you will may be pushed right off the first page of SERPs.

5. Like Button: The use of the “Like” and “Tweet” button has really replaced the use of social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious and Stumble Upon. This also illustrates the spread of Facebook’s influence on 3rd party sites.

6. Paid Social: The use of paid social media such as Facebook Ads and Sponsored Tweets has ski rocketed.

7. Mobile: Time to jump on this band wagon. Some of my clients are getting 30% of their traffic from mobile. I personally switched from Blackberry to iPhone and probably do half my searches now using the iPhone.

8. WordPress as a CMS: WordPress is one of the fastest growing content management systems in the world. Which is a big change from just being a blogging platform. You can now easily build yourself a full blow website in WordPress in a matter of hours for free. Hosting providers like GoDaddy actually allow one click installation of WordPress on your domain in a matter of minutes.

9. Ratings: are now showing up more and more in the search results. These ratings come from either you Google Places listing, Yelp or e-commerce system. Watch for more growth and weight to be put on ratings in the future. In Adwords you can already integrate ratings from your Google Products account into you Ads, which significantly increases CTR and Conversions rates.

10. Site Speed: Well it is official Google wants the internet to be faster, so if you site is slow you will now be penalized for having a slow site which lower rankings.

My advice is to put aside time each week to read internet marketing blogs, so that you can stay on top of all the changes, or hire a internet marketing consultant who will stay up to date for you!

PPC

There is a huge misconception that PPC has to be expensive. If you are a local company then you can just target your service area, which will decrease your costs considerably. Google Adwords’ Geo-targeting is so advances that you can literally draw a trapezoid on a map to determine where your ads will be displayed. For PPC, I highly recommend getting a PPC professional to set up your account and optimize it. Depending how much you are spending per month, a pay per click account can be set up and optimized within 4 to 6 weeks. At which point you can take over the management of your account.

You may want to hire a PPC consultant, on a temporary basis, to set up seasonal campaigns. The majority of my PPC clients use my services on an adhoc basis to ramp up for holiday campaigns. Which can be very affordable and ROI positive. Pay per click really can be as simple or complex as you want, with a budget to match. For example, I spent 3 years full time optimizing an account for single multi-national company. You can always add new keywords and make your adcopy more relevant. The more time you spend optimizing your account the more money you will save because Adwords rewards advertisers that are more relevant with lower cost per clicks.

Blogging

Remember that Google rewards websites that frequently update their content. The more pages you have in any given niche the closer you become to being the authority in a niche. I would recommend not straying to far out of your niche. Pick a hand full of keywords that you have an honest chance of ranking for and then write multiple blog posts around those keywords.

Think about your competition and how often they are writing blog posts. If they are writing blog posts daily and you are only doing it once a month , then you are going to fall behind very quickly. If you don’t know how often they are posting you can always subscribe to a RSS feed to their blog. The RSS feed will alert you every-time they post to their blog. This is also handy because you can sometimes spin their article into your own words and then post it on your site.

Another tool to stay on-top of blogging is to set up Google Alerts, which will updated you every-time someone posts a page of content that matches your keyword filter. Just log into your Google account and set ups some keyword filters. I would pick a few long-tail keywords because if you go too broad you will get hundreds of alerts a day. The second it becomes unmanageable you will end up not using it and totally lose all the value of it.

SEO

On page search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your “on page” content for specific keywords. This consists of either your internal link structure or optimizing your content for specific keywords. Luckily if you have gotten a professional SEO consultant to optimize this once then you get often forget about it for a while. Blogging will take care of the other part of on page optimization which is the continuous process of adding new content to your site.

On the other hand “off page” SEO needs to be conducted daily. Off page SEO consists primarly of link building. Link building is a super important in the minds of the search engines because each incoming link acts as a vote for your site. The more votes you have from reputable sources the higher you will rank. A common way of linking building is blog or forum commenting, directory submission and social media. A great way to get ideas for link building is to use Yahoo’s Site Explorer. This will allow you to insert your competitions URL into it and see their link structure. This will also tell you how many links they have, which will be a good indication of how much link building you should do. Remember that Internet marketing and business in general is all about doing just enough to beat your competition.

Local Optimization

I have a full blog post on all the free local optimization that can be completed.

Internet Marketing Resource

Another huge factor with internet marketing is the speed of change. There are game changing events that happen every 6 months in the industry, therefore it is very important to stay up to date. Here are some internet marketing resources  I recommend.

Summary

In summary, how frequently you maintain your Internet marketing is completely up to your marketing goals and competition level. If you are in a competitive market you will need to spend more time and money to beat your competition.

Example of local search:

Local Search Optimization in Canada

The great thing about optimizing for local search is that it is usually free and just involves a bit of work on your end. The problem with the Canadian local search market is that it is dominated by Yellow Pages. In the US you can sign up for Bing Local Business Center and Yahoo Local but here in Canada Bing, and Yahoo get there local feed from Yellow Pages. (FYI the Yellow Pages Group is the number one Canadian owned site for unique visits according to ComScore)

Sign up for local listings on:

• Google Places
• Yelp Business
• Yellow Pages
• Create a Facebook Page and bookmark the address in Facebook Places
• Local directories that are specific to your industry are also good but stay away from spammy sites

Pimp out the listings

• fill out as much info as possible
• add images and videos that help build trust
• add the correct categories and test out secondary categories
• note if your store is called “Steve’s” then your should add in a category keyword eg. “Steve’s Hardware” which will help the search engines place you in the correct category
• get clients and friends to review your listing of Google and Yelp

This is just phase one of local’s influence on search results, as people use their smart phones more it will be increasing more important to optimize for local. Social media metrics like reviews and “likes” on Facebook will also become huge factors in rankings. On the Pay Per Click side of things you can already incorporate reviews into your PPC ads, if you own a ecommerce site. More to come on optimizing for local paid search.

If you would like help with your local search optimization or paid local search let me know.

Here is the consulting process that can be applied to ppc consulting or any consulting for that matter:

1. Define problem: most clients have a problem, whether it is traffic, leads or sales  and this is the first tasks an internet marketing consultant has to clearly define. If you don’t properly define the clients needs then you are in big trouble (needs analysis for marketing folks)
2. Collect data: spend your time getting as much background information into your client’s industry and needs. The first thing you should do is Google search your clients core products and see how much competition there is for those keywords. Remember to look for both natural and paid. If there is a lot of paid advertising then you may be getting into a very competitive marketing. Click on every natural result and take notes for each site. Use Google Keywords tool and take a look at the competition and CPCs for main product lines. Hopefully your client has a Google Analytics account, which can be another source of data. Lastly take a look at your clients site and take notes of any blatant issues that may hurt conversions later on.
3. Analyzing data: record your findings from the data collection step in an Excel document. How much competition is there for PPC? Are they all using PPC best practices? Do the natural results contain sites that are frequently updated and look pro? Record all observations and start to think about your recommendations. Start setting goals and bench marks for the project. Finally the most important part of this process is deciding whether or not you want to proceed with the project.
4. Making recommendations: hopefully you had some insightful findings from your analysis of the data. Come up with an action plan for your PPC  program. Think about costs, CPAs and the length of time it will take to get results. It is very important to set realistic clients expectations. Set up a meeting with your client and discuss your action plan with your client. Make sure that you have come to a consensus and that everything is signed off.
5. Implementation: to get started make sure that all your Google Analytics and Adwords conversion tracking is properly set up. Make any necessary changes to your clients site so that it has a chance of converting. Start implementing your action plan and watch your minimum bids are being meet with your CPCs. Lastly keep your client up to date on the progress of your implementation.

Hopefully this helps you either as an internet marketing consultant or as a company looking for help.

When I talked to the owner’s Collis Verdicchio and Derek Beech, I asked them how they work the logistics of finding these families. They said that it was difficult finding Peruvian families with looms because only the wealthier families could afford them. There are no large manufacture plants for these rugs to be produced in, as they are all produced in family run workshops. Sumaq’s program is designed to increase the number of looms in each village. However, this would seem like a good business investment if it wasn’t for the fact that they pay “living wages”. This means that all the weavers are paid fare prices which allows them to provide for their families.

Another factor that makes this program a real success is the fact that it allows families to stay together. If these weavers didn’t have their own workshops they would be forced to leave their families and work at low paying manufacturing jobs in the large cities.

Getting back to the internet marketing side of things, for this project we are pushing social media, article submissions  with a small PPC campaign to try to get the word out about this awesome socially conscious company. I have only just begun on this project but I will keep everyone posted on their progress.