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Web Marketing Today: Jupiter Media SE Strategies Conference
Internet Marketing Tools for Small Business
http://www.wilsonweb.com/art/tools/ses050812.htm Content
generation. Many small business sites struggle
because they don't have much content on their sites
-- or in their e-mail newsletters. I found
InfoSearch Media (www.infosearchmedia.com) from
Marina Del Rey, CA. For their ContentLogic service
they employ about 250 content writers, specialists
in various fields, who will write a 250 to 300 word
webpage for you -- targeted to the keywords and
keyphrases you are trying to feature. The cost is
$10 per webpage per month, or $150 if you buy it
outright. When you consider the cost of good writing
in time, creativity, and research, you know this is
a good deal. Not cheap, but fairly priced with small
businesses in mind. Content is king, you know. When
you have good content, other sites will actually
want to link to yours and search engines will
find grist for their mill.
News Feeds.
Need to add clout to your site? Consider adding news
feeds from sources that represent your industry. Two
of these might be
Topix.net (www.topix.net) and industry leader
Moreover.com (www.moreover.com). Topix.net
offers a free service to small sites that don't yet
carry advertising. For local sites it offers news
keyed to ZIP code as well as various industries.
Take a look. This could help you become a
destination site in your niche that others might
want to link to because of your depth of content,
though a news feed by itself won't help you with the
search engines.
PPC Management
Tools. I found various tools for use in managing
and optimizing all your PPC campaigns on a single
platform. Along with industry leader
Atlas onePoint (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/atlas.htm),
I looked at
SearchRev Optimize (www.searchrev.com), which is
priced based on a small percentage of your PPC ad
buy amount.
Inceptor BidCenter (www.inceptor.com) is newly
launched, but is price-competitive and offers a lot
of nice features. Pricing ranges from $49.95/month
for 50 keywords up to $495/month for 500 keywords.
Another tool at the show was Direct Response
Technologies'
BidDirector (www.keywordmax.com/bid_director.html),
which starts at $99 per month to track up to 75,000
click-throughs a month. Each of these is quite
attractive since managing a large number of keywords
across several PPC ad companies intelligently and
wisely can be a nightmare without such a tool.
Cost-Per-Action
Search Networks. There were many ad networks and
second tier Pay Per Click search text ad services at
SES this year. But here is a relatively new idea --
Cost Per Action (CPA) second-tier search networks.
I spotted two:
Revenue.net Search Network (www.revenue.net) and
SNAP.com (www.snap.com). You select the business
result you want -- sale, download, click,
subscription, or lead. Advertisers only pay if a
lead is generated. This is similar to an affiliate
program, but is usually focused on actions other
than sales and is triggered by keyword searches. The
advantage over PPC is no click fraud or bid
management. Unlike affiliate programs, these systems
generally require no long-term commitments or set-up
fees.
Ad Revenue for
Publisher Sites.
Yahoo! Publisher Network (beta, http://publisher.yahoo.com)
is similar to the
Google AdSense program (https://google.com/adsense/),
where various Yahoo ad products appear on
publishers' sites. Currently by invitation only,
Yahoo is picky about its partners, which will
benefit both advertisers by greater responsiveness
and publishers by better prices. Like Google, Yahoo!
doesn't release what percentage of ad revenue
they're sharing with their "partners." I guess
they're big enough to get away with such a blind
partnership. Nevertheless, the resulting competition
between Yahoo! and Google will be good for both
publishers and advertisers.
A/B Split
Testing.
Kefta (www.kefta.com) is now on my radar for
companies that use A/B split-testing and Taguchi
method multivariate testing to both optimize a site
and segment visitors to the site, showing them
content (based on previous visits) that will
increase their likelihood of making a purchase.
Kefta is looking for clients who will spend $6,000
to $12,000 per month and up -- not exactly the core
of the small business market, though the concept is
exciting. What concerns me, however, is Kefta's
contention that their software will do all the work.
I know better. To get good results with
split-testing you need to offer intelligent choices
to test. Two companies I like and am watching are
Offermatica (www.offermatica.com) for larger
sites and
Vertster (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/vertster.htm)
for small to medium business sites.
Search Engine
Optimization Certification. When you're looking
for someone to do organic search engine optimization
for your website, who can you actually trust? SEO
organizations provide no policing of their member
companies. Now
Bruce Clay, Inc. (www.bruceclay.com) is offering
both SEO and PPC training services and a
certification that requires both knowledge and
ethical standards -- and is audited! I've known
Bruce for several years and admire him for bringing
his SEO Code of Ethics to the industry. His company
has a reputation of being able to get top rankings
for the most competitive of keywords (for clients
who can afford the effort it takes to achieve this).
So in my book, Bruce is an ideal person to both
teach the skills and the ethics, and to audit
certification. He also offers an annual update
course. There have been some good SEO training
courses available for several years. Bruce's course
adds certification that actually means something. If
you're an independent SEO firm, this kind of
certification could help you build credibility. If
you're an in-house SEO specialist, this can hone
your skills and make you more employable. If you're
seeking to hire an SEO specialist as a contractor or
employee, I'd encourage you to look for this
certification.
Keyword Research.
If you're developing a PPC ad campaign, you'll need
a comprehensive list of keywords -- particular the
little-used ones. I've always recommended
Wordtracker (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/wordtracker.htm),
the free version of which comes integrated in
WebPosition Gold (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/webposition.htm).
The stand-alone version costs about $8 for a day of
research. But if you're a consultant or professional
PPC service provider and are researching keywords
every day for clients, you might consider
KeywordDiscovery (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/keyworddiscovery.htm)
from Trellian Ltd. for $49.95 per month. They claim
a larger set of keywords.
Keyword Campaign
Tracking. In the past few years there's been a
revolution in web analytics software, the software
that analyzes what's going on with your website,
These days an analytics program can tap into your
ordering system to track sales and helps you the
study keywords that bring paying customers to your
site. I was quite impressed with
Urchin on Demand (www.urchin.com) at $199 per
month -- down from $495 per month before Google
acquired Urchin in May 2005. Why the acquisition? I
asked. Is Google now trying to compete head-to-head
in web analytics? Probably not. Google apparently
acquired Urchin to help its advertisers track
keyword-triggered visits to their sites, so they can
improve their sites and become more successful.
Greater success means more advertising dollars in
Google's pocket. Very nice!
Pay Per Phone
Call is now becoming more common. Pioneered by
Ingenio (www.ingenio.com) and, more recently
Miva (www.miva.com/us/content/advertiser/overview.asp),
it is now offered by
Verizon for their SuperPages.com customers (www.superpages.com/about/pressrelease/123.php).
The Verizon service will begin in September with
minimums of $2 to $6 per call (even higher were bid
up by competitors). This is particularly attractive
for your small business clients who don't really get
what the Web can do for them unless it makes the
phone ring. With Pay Per Call, they only pay when
the phone does ring. Another local search approach I
saw at SES was
Insider Pages (www.insiderpages.com), a review
system gaining strength in a number of US cities.
Your clients rate your business online with short
testimonials or reviews. If your business receives a
phone call as a result, then you pay, but only then.
New Marketing
Periodical.
BtoB, the Magazine for Marketing Strategists
(www.btobonline.com) is a new trade journal
published monthly by Crain Communications. It looks
pretty similar to periodicals of yesteryear, but the
name is different this time around. The current
issue has articles on keyword selection,
pay-per-call, integrated marketing, and marketing to
meeting planners and hotel managers. It follows the
trend of considering both online and offline
marketing. You can subscribe to one or more free
e-newsletters that send you slices of the magazine's
content. |
