Archive for Internet Marketing

I recently wrote this factsheet for a prospective Adwords client and thought it worth sharing with folks who haven’t yet used Adwords. There’s much more to Adwords, it’s a wonderfully complex system. So, see this as a teaser, and feel free to ask questions!

What is Google Adwords, anyway?

Google Adwords refers primarily to advertising placed into search results pages (there’s more, beyond the scope of this post).

Searchers input a string of words (called keywords, in Adwords terminology) for which they want information. Google search returns a list of web pages that are relevant to the searcher’s keywords, called organic search results, and text ads, called Adwords ads, using an auction system based on relevancy to decide the order of the ads on the page or pages.

Therefore, for your Google Adwords ad to be listed high on the first page of search results, you must have developed a highly relevant ad, using some or all of the steps listed below.

How to create winning Adwords campaigns

1. Determine the goals of your Adwords campaigns, such as:
   Better visibility on search pages and Google maps, build credibilltiy as experts in particular areas, increase traffic to your website, drive new customers/clients to contact you/buy from you.
2. Develop lists of keywords that customers/clients might use to find you when searching.
3. Optimize your website to be more search engine friendly (seo). This may include adding the specific keywords that customers/clients use to find similar pages in Google search, adding subheads including keywords, adding meta-keywords, etc.
4. Decide on the topics of your ad campaigns. Create ads using relevant keywords. Create alternate ads for split testing, to continually improve the relevancy of your ads.
5. Decide on initial maximum amount you are willing to spend per click per keyword. We usually begin low, and receive feedback from Google on how much you will need to spend to move your ad onto the first page of results and up the page.
6. Decide on initial maximum budget per day for each campaign and overall. Google will recommend higher budget based on overall number of clicks per campaign. We’ll review the campaign with you and discuss changing budget during the year.
7. Depending on your goals and your website, develop landing pages (specific to particular campaigns), or add forms to pages already relevant to the ads created in the Adword campaigns.
8. Review the process and start again from the beginning, always testing results as we progress.

There’s more complexity to the process, as I mentioned at the beginning, but this should give you a good overview of what Adwords is all about, and why you might want to try it.

SEO, or search engine optimization means optimizing the content of a web page for search engines so that the page shows near or at the top of the page of search results. Why is this a concern for web designers and web developers?

Web designers and developers don’t normally consider themselves content creators or writers. However, web designers and developers are often the people who are tasked with adding titles, headings, meta tags, and span styles to web pages. These items can all be used to optimize a web page for search engines, so it’s important for web designers and developers to have a basic understanding of search engine optimization.

SEO vs information architecture

A lot of time is typically given to information architecture at the beginning of a web development project. Information architects and front end developers plot the flow of information in a web site to develop the most logical flow and navigation schemes that will work most efficiently for users of the site.

You might say that information architects look at a site from the top down (though not all sites are top-down hierarchies). SEO begins at the other end, or bottom-up, on each individual page of a site. It is based on users searching for very specific information, using search terms and search phrases. When a user searches for information, they are free to select from the results, so the result that matches their search most closely is the result they will most likely choose.

This means that they enter a site on the page they are looking for, and often leave from the same page, either after satisfying their interest in the page, or moving from there to whatever action the web page moves them towards (often to the shopping cart on an e-commerce site).

Keywords

An SEO professional will analyze the terms that are most likely to be used by people interested in a specific page (called keywords), will make sure that those terms appear in the title, the headings, emphasized text (either bold or italic). SEO specialists develop lists of up to 20 keywords for a topic, and add them to the Titles, Heads, Meta Description and emphasized text on a page. As a web designer, you won’t be tasked with developing keyword lists, however, if you are aware of how search engine spiders work, you can make sure than main keywords (including location) are used throughout a page.

Organic Search Engine Results

We’re discussing what is called Organic Search Engine Results in this article. That means the unpaid results that search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Ask and others return in their main listings. Not the paid ads, although those paid ads use the same techniques to increase relevance which helps them rise to the top of the results page.

The Title of Each Page Counts

Each page of the web site should have a unique title that will interest the person who sees it in search engine results. Take a look at Google search results. First you see the Title of the page, then the Meta Description Tag (if the web developer has included it). Search terms are highlighted throughout. After the Meta Description Tag information (or whatever information the search engine’s spider has found, usually the first paragraph of the page) comes the url.

The Meta Description Tag

Even if you habitually fill in the page Title, it’s less likely that you add a unique Meta Description Tag, yet this is what search engine spiders look for after finding the page Title. Here’s the HTML syntax for the Meta Description Tag (add angle brackets at beginning and end):

META NAME=”Description” CONTENT=”Your descriptive sentence or two goes here.”

You can assist the searcher (and your client of course) by adding a summary of the page to the header of the page in a Meta Description Tag. Or you can make your client aware of its importance and ask them to supply copy for each page’s Meta Description Tag, if they are interested in determining what copy a search engine shows, rather than leaving the choice up to the spider.

Headings, Pull quotes, Boxed Text, Emphasized text

The next thing search engine spiders look for are the Headings you have used throughout. So, if content comes to you without Headings, add them! Break content into short paragraphs and add Headings. Add pull quotes, boxes, emphasized text. Search engine spiders will pick these elements out and rank your page higher for the terms emphasized in these ways.

There’s more to SEO

A full SEO campaign will include many components, including identifying competition and their use of keywords, keyword analysis, adding keywords to content, links-building programs, adding fresh content on a regular basis, submitting web press releases with inbound links, etc. The web designer/developer might only participate in a few of the components. These may be very important components though, so discussing them with your clients is worthwhile and can add to the services you provide and the compensation you receive from each web project.

500th-painting-sold
Originally uploaded by mlangfeld.

I recently blogged about websites-as-graphs. Now it’s time to introduce you to one-thousand-paintings as well.

When I found the websites-as-graphs site, it referred me to www.onethousandpaintings.com to support the author. So, I decided to check it out. I found an intriguing conceptual art site. Sala, the author of both sites, is in the process of painting and selling paintings of all the numbers from 1 to 1000.

I love both the idea, and his method of using the Internet to market the paintings. He’s masterminded a viral marketing campaign that’s been very successful to date. I just purchased the number 72, which was the 500th painting to be sold. He’s already over half way to his goal of selling 1000 paintings. I wish him success in this project!

Google became the most-used search engine with their simple interface. Simple design. Focus on the task at hand.

They tried to extend this design solution to the Video arena, and stumbled. Why?

Just think about it a little. When you do a search, you have a term in mind. It may not be the correct term, but the responses you receive will normally help you refine your term if needed.

What do you do when you want to see a video? Do you know the name of what you want to see? Only if it’s a classic and you’re already familiar with it. Otherwise, you browse, either at the video store, on your cable system, using a Netflix catalog, etc.

I went to Google Video when it first opened, to take a look at it. It used the same interface as Google Search, with disastrous results. I couldn’t find anything I was interested in, except a few I Love Lucy shows. I left, unimpressed.

Next I took a look at iTunes Music Store. It’s interface is quite complex. It took me a while to find TV shows. But once I browsed to TV shows, I was shown an interesting sampling, and could also browse all the TV shows they carry.

So what? Well, as a web designer or client, there’s an important lesson to learn. Not simply that Google can make mistakes. Rather that you need to understand how your users will interact with your page/site. Simplicity for simplicity’s sake doesn’t always work. The iTunes Music Store is complex (and may become too complex as they add more items), but its current complexity allowed me to browse and find shows I never would have thought to use as search terms.

Search and browse are different activities. Know what activities your audience will be most comfortable doing, and design for that activity.

google video
search
browse
user interface

Yellowikis.jpg
Originally uploaded by mlangfeld.

I’m working on some marketing basics for my design practice lately. Along with other strategies, I’ve updated my Yellow Pages advertising, both in print and on the Web. Thanks to Richard McManus’s Read/WriteWeb for introducing me to Yellowikis, open business listings, a user-updated web business index that’s slowly becoming known and used.

Any of you out there that have a business might be interested in both adding a listing and letting others know about this free business listing service. It is a wiki, which means that it is freely editable. It depends on its users to add listings, plan for expansion, translate pages into other languages (it’s English-based).

yellowikis
marketing
yellow pages