Ryan Hupfer’s recent guest post on TechCrunch provides an interesting comparison between MySpace and Facebook in terms of delivering an advertising return on investment (ROI).

Ryan is the Marketing Manager for HubPages - a kind of group blog where members earn recognition and money by publishing content on their ‘Hubs’ (content-rich Internet pages). In November 2008 he tested advertising on Facebook compared with advertising on MySpace.

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Want our firm, Kikabink, some other search engine optimization company, or someone on your staff to assist with your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts? Well, before you get your SEO program underway, it’s a good idea to have clear answers to these three (3) questions:

1. What is your goal?

Sure, it might be higher rankings… but it probably isn’t. It’s more likely to be increasing qualified traffic to your website, right? Unfortunately, some companies get sold on the promise of higher rankings… and indeed they get higher rankings… but for keywords that don’t generate any meaningful or qualified leads. Your best bet is to ensure your SEO provider understands what your true goal is, and not to be ‘wowed’ by meaningless promises of high rankings.

Sadly, SEO consultants and clients can often get caught up in details and metrics that, at the end of the day, are irrelevant to the true goal. Perhaps more than in any other area of marketing, it can be easy to fixate on rankings, click through rates, keyword density and other statistics, that guide us towards - but in no way signify our arrival at - our goal.

So before you get started with SEO, I suggest being very clear about what you (really) want.

2. When do you want to achieve your goal?

Once you’ve defined your goal, the next question is when do you want to achieve it. Depending on how competitive is your market from a SEO perspective, getting higher, meaningful rankings may take several months. Getting to the first page, or in the first few spots on the first page, may take several more.

Now it’s not unheard of for companies in highly competitive fields to leap from nowhere to the first page of results within 6 months. But there are all kinds of reasons for jumps of this magnitude, and it’s not wise to assume it will happen for your site. So, in general, it’s wise to view SEO as a long-term process that requires continued effort.

On the other hand, if you need desperately need more traffic, you may be better off using another means of getting it e.g. advertising, partnering or joint-venturing with others, etc.

3. What are you prepared to pay (not just in money) to achieve your goal?

You didn’t really believe SEO was free did you? Like anything worthwhile, there are costs involved - whether in terms of your (or your staff’s) time, the costs of engaging someone to implement the raft of activities that SEO involves, or other resources. And keep in mind that just because you hire an SEO firm, you may still need to do plenty of work yourself. In fact, it’s all too common for companies to hire SEO consultants who, as promised, give them plenty of advice on what to do - and how to do it - in order to achieve higher rankings. Problem is, those companies don’t have the resources to implement all that advice.

Someone has to optimize the website… someone has to install the analytics scripts… someone has to upload the optimized pages to the website… someone has to write the press releases and articles… someone has to distribute those press releases and articles… someone has to monitor the SEO performance.

And someone has to manage all these people and processes.

Are you going to do that? Is your SEO consultant going to do it? Apart from the budget required to get your SEO firm’s advice… do you have the budget to implement their advice?

All in all, when evaluating the extent to which you wish to pursue SEO - and the return on investment (ROI) you expect - keep in mind the costs involved.

Now for the good news: if you CAN answer each of these questions – and your answers indicate that SEO is well worth the effort - you are well on your way to implementing an unstoppable SEO ‘machine’. A machine that will consistently pump out the necessary content, attract the right back-links, and do everything required to lift your search engine rankings.

AdGooroo reports that in the third quarter of 2008 Microsoft benefited from a 19.3% increase in active first page advertisers, the biggest quarterly increase since AdGooroo began measuring advertising activity in April 2007.

Moreover, compared with a year ago, Live Search has grown its active advertiser base by almost 32%, placing it in the strongest position its ever been in.

Google, meanwhile, has had a mixed quarter. Although AdGooroo recorded a 3% increase in active advertisers, Google’s ad coverage dropped to its lowest levels in August and September, suggesting that August and September may have been weak months.

AdGooroo believes that May’s roll-out of the new AutoMatch algorithm has not made up for the attrition of small advertisers. The impact of Google’s algorithm change in mid-September - one which appears to undo some of the aggressive quality control measures which have purged advertisers (and spends) since July 2007 – is yet to be seen.

Yahoo experienced no significant change in ad growth. AdGooroo measured a 2.5% decrease in active first-page advertisers, but noticed no significant changes in other metrics.

Source: AdGooroo Q308 search marketing research report now available Search Engine Advertiser Update – Q308 October 9, 2008

David Szetela, writing in Search Engine Watch, offers some excellent tips for interpreting pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign data.

He explains that the most crucial data points are the conversion rate and cost-per-conversion, and that if the underlying aim of the campaign is to generate profitable sales, then these are much more important than such metrics as the click-through rate (CTR) and cost-per-click (CPC).

Yet, he makes a useful distinction. The CTR is still a useful indicator of how keywords and ads combine to generate a click, while the conversion rate measures how well keywords, ads, and the landing page combine to get a visitor to take the desired action (e.g. clicking on a link, opting in to a list, buying a product). The cost-per-conversion, meanwhile, measures the price paid to get someone to both click on the ad and take the desired action.

David explains that the results generated by a campaign can not only indicate the performance of the campaign, but can also highlight how well or poorly the campaign has been structured. For example, if the CTR and conversion rates vary widely within an ad group, the keywords in the ad group are not as related to one another, to the ad copy, or to the landing page (in the case of significant conversion rate variance), as is ideal. That indicates the keyword group should be split up into tighter groups.

Another tip is that when a particular keyword has a relatively high search volume and a lot of conversions at the right cost-per-conversion but a relatively low CTR… then it’s probably a good idea to carve off that keyword into a separate ad group - maybe even its own ad group - so that a more focused ad can be written.

On the other hand, if a keyword has a high CTR but low conversion rate, this may signify the need to better align the landing page with the PPC ad copy.

David Szetela makes an interesting point about keywords with low CTRs (e.g. less than 0.5%) and low (but not zero) conversion rates. While it may be tempting to scrap such keywords, he suggests that any keyword that produces a conversion is worth keeping. In this case it may be a matter of tweaking the ‘match’ settings and/or add some qualifiers to the keyword list (e.g. negative keywords) to improve its performance.

Check out the article for more tips for analyzing your PPC data.

Source: David Szetela, “Reading the Tea Leaves: Interpreting Keyword Reports”, Search Engine Watch, October 13, 2008

Here’s a quick tip for improving just about any aspect of your marketing or business: start measuring it.

Now, measuring performance is NOT enough of course. It’s critical to take action to improve that performance. But measuring it is a great first step. Once you know the numbers - whether they relate to traffic, conversion rates or anything else – you’ll naturally start thinking about how to improve those numbers… and ideally you’ll start making those improvements.

Even if there are numbers you just don’t have the time or resources to improve right now, it’s still worthwhile having them on your radar. In fact it’s critical if you’re to avoid unpleasant surprises. By keeping track of key metrics you’ll tend to notice patterns or anomalies that require immediate attention. More importantly, you’ll be able to give them immediate attention.

If you haven’t implemented a website statistics program, I recommend signing up for a Google Analytics account. It’s free and provides a range of invaluable data. If you do track your web statistics, make it a habit to check them at appropriate intervals.

Don’t do this obsessively of course - i.e to the point where you spend more time checking your numbers than doing anything about them!

Instead, check them as frequently as is necessary to be able to notice trends, problems or opportunities, and make any necessary changes.

Google has struck a multi-year deal with NBC Universal to sell inventory on a number of NBC cable stations.

Under the arrangement, Google will sell ads on Sci Fi, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC and other networks. It will also partner with NBC Universal to develop new ad metrics and assess viewership data acquired from set top boxes (available under Google’s relationship with EchoStar’s DISH network).

Source: Zachary Rodgers, “Google Partners with NBC Universal on TV Ads”, The ClickZ Network, September 9, 2008

Not too long ago, Mike Filsaime promoted his “Review Crusher” software - software designed to enable everyone and their dog to set up a “review” website or, more accurately, an affiliate marketing website in the guise of a site offering product and service reviews.

There’s certainly nothing wrong, per se, with this kind of business model - and apparently there are marketers making tons of money with it. But if more and more affiliates are going to set up such review sites… I have to wonder about the longevity of those sites
with a weak implementation.

Chances are, more and more consumers will start tuning out when they realize that all those review sites are really just trying to push their favored affiliate products, rather than offer honest, helpful reviews and advice. (And those affiliates implementing Review
Crusher and similar software in “cookie cutter” fashion are likely to fare even worse.)

But that doesn’t mean a consumer review business model can’t work. In fact, the plethora of faux review sites may intensify the demand for genuine, objective product and service reviews.

And that’s a key reason why a business such as Angie’s List (http://www.angieslist.com) - an online subscription-based service that lets consumers share their ratings of local service providers - has grown into such a hugely successful business.

Angie’s List has attracted more than 330,000 paid members and expanded into 124 cities around the United States. Members post more than 40,000 reviews a month, and the site accepts only limited advertising from vendors.

MarketingSherpa recently profiled Angie’s List. Some of the reasons why the business has thrived despite so much free competition are:

• steadfastly insisting on staying reliable and independent;
• supplementing user-generated content with editorial content and value-added services;
• expanding the breadth of local services it covers; and
• using metrics and testing to making ongoing improvements.

None of this is rocket science - yet it seems to escape those who jump on the latest “online bizop” and then wonder why they’re”business” doesn’t last. Take a leaf out of Angie’s List: build a business that delivers real value and you’re likely to prosper.

Source: MarketingSherpa, “Angie’s List Thrives on Trust: 6 Strategies that Attract Paid Subscribers,” MarketingSherpa, August 28, 2008

If you’re familiar with search engine optimization (SEO) you’ll know that getting QUALITY back-links is critical to moving your website up in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Getting a few links from trusted and authoritative websites beats getting a lot of links from “junky” or irrelevant websites every time.

So too, as SEO expert Michael Gray says in a recent blog post, most SEOs would define a good back-link as:

“a keyword rich link from a well linked/important/popular page on a trusted and authoritative website, that is preferably topically relevant to your site.”

Mr Gray goes on to point out the major problem with a definition like this: there is no publicly available or agreed upon metric for what is a “trusted and authoritative website”!

While search engine optimizers will point to sites such as the New York Times or the Wall
Street Journal as trusted and authoritative websites, that isn’t much help to webmasters who have little hope of ever getting a back-link from such news sites.

Consequently, Gray advises webmasters to:

1. Do your research and consider all the available metrics – such as Page Rank, Alexa, Compete, Technorati, Quantcast, Hitwise and Feedburner - looking for correlations between such metrics; and

2. Consider the blogs in your space to see who is getting the most links.

I would also add this:

3. Consider the content of the website. Does it strike you as being of high quality?

If a site scores highly on all the above-mentioned metrics, has tons of links, and is of a high standard… chances are it’s considered reasonably trusted and authoritative by the search engines.

And if you get mixed results for a given site, do what all search engine optimizers do: use your judgment!

Source: Michael, Gray, “Teaching Advanced Link Building and Why Pagerank Will Never Die”, GrayWolf’s SEO Blog, August 13, 2008

When it comes to pay-per-click advertising (PPC), you’ve probably heard - and hopefully applied - the “rule” that you should never buy a click that costs more than your value per visitor (or VPV) (the average net profit you make per visitor).

If you don’t know your VPV, it’s simply the average net profit per sale x your conversion rate. (Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that convert into customers).

In most cases, if your CPC is NOT less than your VPV, you are losing money on the PPC campaign… and maybe in your business as a whole.

But is that always so? Does this “rule” always apply?

The answer is no and no!

There are at least two situations where you CAN afford to pay more than your VPV for a click:

1. Where you KNOW that you’ll make more money on back end sales. In other words, you can afford to lose money on the first product you sell to a customer, because, on average, they’ll buy plenty of products from you later on - and ultimately be profitable for you.
2. Where you KNOW that a particular keyword (or keyphrase) has an exceptional conversion rate - i.e. your testing and tracking shows that a certain keyword attracts visitors who buy much, more than those generated by any of your other keywords. You’ll need to do some math, but you may find that you can afford to pay quite a bit more than your VPV on this particular keyword and still come out ahead.

Bottom line: know your metrics. You can then take advantage of “little” opportunities that lead to big increases in your profits.