Last week, we quietly released the bug fix to the Mozilla sandbox. This is now approved and is also available to download below. Please leave any feedback in the comments below.

This version should also improve performance and allow 100 more locations/IPs/Zip codes to be added and stored. All previous saved locations and settings should not be lost in this upgrade.

Like this extension? Why not share it instantly on twitter? Tweet This!

Two years ago (I think) when Google dragged it’s advertisers kicking and screaming into the new Quality based bidding system, the game completely changed. Google AdWords no longer operates on a “highest bid wins” system but on a rather confusing and sometimes illusive set of quality criteria.

Some people find it very difficult to get their heads around how this “quality” effects their bid prices and ultimately their ROI. Today, Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian has posted a fantastic video that simplifies the whole system and makes it easy for anyone to understand.

Easy to understand or what?

Now that you understand quality score a little better, realize how important it is to improve your quality score by increasing your click through rate and re-evaluating your landing page relevancy, what are you waiting for? Even if you increase your CTR by 0.01% a day over a month, that can be enough to bump your keywords quality score up and reduce your overall costs significantly.

Below you will find some screenshots of the new interface. Please note that I have removed any data that has identified the campaigns. These details are simply deleted and are indeed included in the interface. Please click images for full sized shots.

The new interface is a streamlined, ajaxified beast with a lot of new features. You’ll notice straight off the bat that the interface has been adjusted to look like Google analytics. In fact, the transition between AdWords and analytics is now seamless, complete with all the ajax progress animations. There is also an option to collapse the left sidebar (not shown) which includes a list of campaigns for easy access, similar to AdWords editor.

The one feature of note however is the new “networks” tab in each campaign. This tab lists the networks that your campaign is running on. Either search, search partners, content network and defined placements. The best part however is the content network automatic placements!

Previously, the only way to access this data was to through a tedious process of creating a placement performance report for the date range you wanted. Then you had to wade through the data with the awful pagination Google provides in it’s reports (what can we really do with 100 rows Google?). You also had to manually select your campaigns. Not any more.

Now you can see day by day metrics on each URL that your ads appear on the content network without running a placement performance report!

And that’s not the best part. With the new view, you can sort the columns in order of the metric of your choice, check the URLs that are performing to that metric and automatically add them to your placement campaigns! (Now called “Managed Placements” as seen).

To those of you who that were willing to put in the hard slog and suffer the sometimes agonizing wrath of the content network and placement campaigns you will realize how much of a fantastic new time saving feature this will be. This cuts out what can be hours of research time looking for decent performing placements.

The interface is still in very early beta. It errors out at least 2 times a session for me every time I have tried it. This has been a common complaint so I doubt it will be released any time soon.

Now, if Google could provide some cross segmentation options and integrate the bizarrely missing display ad builder tool, this will be an absolute hit. Great stuff Google!

Is anyone else as excited about this as I am?

Like this post? Why not share it instantly on twitter? Tweet This!

Below, I outline five examples of ways you can increase your CTR without doing anything technical or magical. The ads are fabricated but the data is not. The ads are as close to the original as possible. Besides, you’re going to test the theory yourself anyway right?

1) Trademark Symbol/Registered Symbol.

While I have been using this method myself for years, Brad and Amber make some great points on this very topic. Not only can special symbols be used to increase your PPC CTR, but they can also be used to increase your organic SERP CTR. I could not agree with Ian Lurie more on his blog post predicting that organic CTR will matter a LOT in 2009.

2) Price In Headline

Adding the price in the headline is a great way to increase CTR. Be careful with this one though, if you’re not the cheapest, you’re CTR will suffer.

3) Seasonal Headlines.

Doesn’t matter if your product is not seasonal. If you sell blue widgets all year around, a headline like “Easter Widget Sale” will work great. There are so many different holidays, festivals and events that this can be used with. If you’re targeting locally, even better.

4) Trademark in Display URL Subdomain

While you can’t use most trademark terms in your ad copy, you can use them in your display URL.  Amber has a great post on why AdWords allows trademarks in the display URL here. Using the trademark in the display URL some argue confuses potential clickers into thinking that it is the “official” site of the trademark holder. Be careful with this one too… Google knows when a visitor clicks the back button on their browser!

5) The exact Keyword in the Headline.

An oldie, but a goodie. We all know that search engines BOLD your keywords when they match the search query. Having tightly knit adgroups will allow you to take advantage of this without having to use dynamic keyword insertion.

Remember, CTR for quality score reasons is only calculated on the exact match of the keyword and is only counted on the Google search network. This means that any increase in CTR from Dynamic Keyword Insertion does not improve your google quality score. CTR on Google search partners does not contribute to your quality score calculations.

It has been a little over 5 months since I last posted here on the RedFly blog. We have not dropped off the face of the planet. In fact, we have been doing some pretty great things that has left us with little time to do some of the fun stuff (like blogging). While neglecting to post over the past few months was a necessary evil, I am happy to say that normal blogging shall resume shortly.

We have a lot of fantastic things lined up this year along with the usual conference circuit. I myself will be attending SES London, SMW Dublin (Highly recommended), A4U Expo Amsterdam, eBay Devcon and various others toward the end of the year. If anyone would like to stop me for a chat there, please feel free!

I will also be trying to check out the first ever TeenCamp Ireland. While I am no longer a teen, I hope they wont mind me popping in for an hour or so. I think it is absolutely amazing that the Irish youth are so tuned in these days. Organized by and for teens, Teencamp is sure to be a fantastic day.

Finally, I would like to extend an invitation to any of our readers. If there is any topics that you would like us to cover this year, please feel free to get in touch and we’ll do our best.

All the best for 2009!

The event will once again be hosted by the Harbour Master in the IFSC, Dublin on Saturday the 9th of August. I encourage everyone who can to attend as it is a great way to have a few drinks with people who don’t get annoyed at you for talking shop when socializing.

For the second time running, the event will be sponsored by the most fantastic webhosting company in Ireland, Blacknight Solutions who incidently are launching their new web hosting plans today and have also just exploded onto the scene with their new VPS hosting solutions (I plan to sample the finest champagne) ;)

If you can make it we will be meeting at 7:30PM - 8:30PM. This is an open event and anyone can attend. The last event was great and I cannot tell you how much I got out of meeting everyone.

The confirmed attendees are as follows:

• Richard Hearne
• Dave Behan
• James Larkin
• Micky Wall
• Louie (You cannot miss him)
• Gavin Doolan
• Dave Davis
• James Farrell

The last time a LOT more than the confirmed list came along so please do join us.I might be there a little late so whoever gets there first, please get a table where we can all sit together! Looking forward to meeting some fresh faces and some… not so fresh. More details can be found here.

Those who are definitely coming along, let me know in the comments below and I’ll link you up above.

For this example, we’ll use the trusted Google Content Network. For those unfamiliar, Google allows you to advertise using Adwords on three different “networks”. These are “categories” are the Google Search Network, which AdWords advertisers will be most familiar, The Search Partners Network which includes AOL and various other “trusted sources” and the Google Content Network which consists of hundreds of thousands of websites and domains running Google AdSense. For the sake of simplicity, I am leaving out print, audio and TV. What we will be focusing today is the Google Content Network.

Many advertisers either fail to consider buying additional domains to compliment their main one or don’t want the trouble of researching the value of the domain. With the Google Content Network, this is already being done for you behind the scenes.

The content network is, by default, run on all sources. This includes a plethora of relevant publisher websites as well as social networks, video portals and parked domains. We want to take a closer look at the latter.

It should be noted that Google give options to exclude most of these sources from within the AdWords console.

Assuming you are advertising on the content network and have your conversion tracking set up (you do have it set up don’t you?) you can use a rarely spoken about AdWords report called the “Placement Performance Report”. This report gives you insight into how your ads are performing on the different sources and gets as granular as the domain and URL of where your ad was served from.

When you run this particular report, you can choose to report and view on a variety of metrics. For the purpose of this post, we will only be looking at the domain, URL impressions, clicks, conversions and Value/Cost (Return On AdWords Ad Spend).

Below you will see an actual report run for one of our clients. As you can see, we have sorted the list by ascending conversion data. This is a report for ONE WEEK. Starting to see where I am going with this? For this particular client, the value for each conversion is between $97 and $227 so you can clearly see that the content network is working for them.

Great! We can see the content network is working well for this client. We can leave it running right? Well… let’s just take a look at what’s actually on “parked domain 1″. When we navigate to the site, we see a typical SEDO landing page with content network ads prominently displayed. We can also see the clients ad running in position #3. However, as with most/many SEDO landing pages that are only monetized through advertising while they are waiting to be sold, in the left column there is an offer to “Buy this domain“.

So this domain is for sale eh? If this domain is generating an average of six conversions per week for this client and it’s getting a lot of type in traffic, it must be worth something. Even sharing this domain with ten advertisers using AdWords, the value to this particular client is on the bottom end is $762 ($127 x 6) per week or $39624 per year! (assuming traffic is maintained AND that the client is still sharing with the other advertisers). We might be on to something. Clicking on the “More Details” link to buy the domain brings us to the following page:

So here we have a domain that’s generating $762 a week gross revenue and it’s for sale for $500? Do I need to tell you what happened next?

We advised the client and they purchased the domain the day of this report. Because we know which landing page was generating the conversions from this domain, the client simply did a 301 redirect to the landing page and let me tell you, they are reaping the rewards. They are getting an even higher than expected return because now they are not paying for the clicks to their site and are not sharing the page with 9 other competitors! Since the beginning of the year, they have purchased over 30 domains using this method.

Buying these domains that have type in traffic and that you KNOW convert (from your AdWords conversion data) offer a significant long term return on investment. So what are you waiting for? Go run your placement performance reports and see what money you are leaving on the domain table today! (before your competitors read this)

Aaron is considered an industry veteran and the “go to guy” for all things SEO related.

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your site SEO book ?

I have been doing SEO for about 5 years now, and work about 6.5 days a week. My wonderful wife and I just had our first anniversary. :)

SEO Book was born as a blog covering SEO, and has morphed into a site which is more about search and online marketing in general, which offers a popular suite of tools and a training program.

Can you tell us how much of a difference switching from the ebook model to the online training model has worked out well for you and what was the one thing that tipped you into moving?

I think we easily have the best SEO community on the web. The pricepoint has simply filtered out the noise common at most SEO forums while lively conversation occurs daily. The one big flaw with the current model is that the members and I spend so much time inside the forums that little time is spent externally on marketing to bring new people in, so growth has not been fast but I would rather go for quality than size any day of the week.

I was an unhappy person with the old business model. It required me to answer questions for people who valued my time at $0, which lead to me having too many customers when we reached around the 13,000 mark. Plus as some of the sleazy email list spammer hype driven internet marketers started hyping SEO it lowered lead quality at the lower end, which was where my business model was situated. A business model that is scalable with 10,000 customers with less than 1% of the customer interactions not going well becomes simply unsustainable when it grows to 13,000 with 5% of the customers being not customers well aligned with your brand and strategy. I was doing so much email that I started to easily become rude and frustrated.

Many customers have told me that I made their business careers and made them millionaires, but as search grew more complex the market for people wanting honest advice moved beyond the $79 pricepoint the old business operated at. Ultimately I was serving the wrong market and lowering the percieved value of my product by being available so cheaply, even while competitors selling information products at 50x or 100x the price of mine were asking for the latest copy of my ebook before making their next info product, and lifting lines from my work and integrating it into their work.

The other thing that happened was that my sites that were 5% of my time started to become the majority of my income. It does not make sense to spend most your time on a job that does not make much money, especially if it is no longer enjoyable. And so changing the business model of SEO Book allows me to enjoy it again, while increasing the value to customers and not drastically lowering its revenues or drastically increasing the amount of time needed to maintain it.

Google is all over the place right now and it is looking like a lot of factors that once held weight no longer do and vice versa. What do you make of the current state of flux? Where do you see Google applying more weight?

I see a lot of people talking about localization becoming a more important topic. Google is placing a lot of weight on exact match domain names, and their current reliance on domain authority is springing up a bunch of general websites like eHow, Mahalo, Squidoo, etc.

The big thing to really look out for is arbitrary hand edits. If your site does not look good it might get edited out of the search results even if you offer the highest quality information in your space.

How effective do you think buying established websites is to SEO leaving the branding, customer base and community factors out?

Buying old sites based on their link equity is amazingly profitable. The key is to not be too drastic or spammy with the changes you make such that you can get many years of cashflow out of such a site.

Do you think that there are any on or off page white hat techniques that if over used (Think over use of the nofollow attribute, borderline excessive internal linking etc.) may trigger a flag at Google? Do you believe there is such a thing as an over optimization flag?

Sure. I think many people repeate keyword phrases more than is optimal, and some of my pages have got automatically filtered out for being too well aligned with a keyword. The key when that happens is to lower the keyword prominence and repetition - make sure there is some variance between your page title, inbound anchor text, and how you are using the keywords in page content.

Why do you think so many webmasters spend so much time and money *cough* on buying links when the cost of developing content that attracts higher quality editorial links is far less?

Man is inherantly lazy. Editorial links in many markets require building a brand and social interaction. That can be a slow and low ROI path that looks like there is no light at the end of the tunnel, especially if you are new to the social aspects of the web and do not have any experience with blogs and the like.

You offer a great Google Global Firefox extension and we have a suite of well linked to SEO tools. For you and I it is cheaper to create content that builds free links, but for most people on the web the ROI of such an experiment is not as obvious until after they experience it.

Also worth noting that at the corporate end there is also less risk to buying links, and many more people and hurdles in between the creation of a good idea and the finished product.

For those who say that SEO is “Bullshit” and that correctly designed, semantically sound design is all that is needed to rank higher than your competition, what do you say to them?

I made a site to prove them wrong. A semantically sound site that gets no search traffic, and gave it the name dollarseo.com. Please give it a look and laugh, but please do not link at it though or it will mess up the test. ;)

What do you say to the same group who think that SEO should not be a dedicated profession?

A non-trivial portion of the business world is driven by arbitrage. Some industries have licenses that require people to jump through hoops before they can profit in them, but many of the best things to arbitrage are new fields where guidelines are not fully established and the market is not well informed.

It does not matter that some people do not like the field of SEO. If done well it is both highly profitable and highly effective. If you pick the right products and clients it is one of the rare opportunities where you can help ensure that everyone wins.

Having said all of the above, SEO is becoming much more complex, and is becoming a subset of marketing. In some industries it requires the use of public relations, in others it requires the act of smart publishing, and yet in others it comes down to ad buying. Any single strategy can get you to the top for some keywords, but the more tools you have the greater the likelihood you can compete across many different keywords and categories.

From a client perspective I think if you sell SEO services it might be helpful to bundle them with PPC services. People looking for a consultant on PPC are looking for cost savings where they are already spending money. Whereas many people looking for SEO are looking for free traffic. This was one of the reasons why I thought my wife had a good idea in launching PPC Blog. Rather than catering to a market saturated with free misinformation with prospective clients wanting everything for free it caters to an audience looking to spend money.

Do you have any tips on ranking country specific domains/sites in multiple locations. For example, if I have www.mysite.ie and want to target the US, UK and Ireland? What approach would you take if starting from scratch and what approach would you take with an established site?

I have nowhere near the international experience that some great SEOs like you from across the pond, but if I was on a limited budget I would set my main market on the main domain name and use subdomains for other markets. If I were using one main domain I would try to build from the .com. I would also try to secure the other names in case I later wanted to change my strategy.

If I had more budget and knew I would market all the sites then I would get 3 domain names (1 for each region) and host each of them in their matching location.

In the coming years, what SEO techniques do you predict are going to become more/most popular with dedicated hard working SEOs?

I think SEO is really going to become more and more about public relations and social interaction. Today I read a post by a web designer talking about how you should aim for a 2% keyword density. He was no SEO expert, but because he was a popular web designer his post got hundreds of comments and many inbound links.

It is not what you know but who you know. What communities do you want links from? How can you integrate yourself and your business in them?

In your experience, what has been the TYPE of link that has been most worth your time acquiring?

Links that come as endorsements from trusted members of your community help with rankings, pay directly through sales and referals, and are hard for competitors to replicate. They pay 3 different ways and lead to additional links, plus they are beyond the reach of most competitors. Those are the links I really love.

Finally, how do you think the search industry, SEO in particular can move away from the “cowboy”, “get rich quick” and “snake oil” labels that so many low quality providers have caused all SEOs to be tarred with the same brush by default?

I think the only way this would be possible is if we made a group effort to highlight the sleasy stuff that Google markets in their paid ads and help rebrand their service such that we introduced opportunity cost to them for them trying to trash us. But it would need to be well organized to succeed, but from what I have seen most well known people in the SEO space are looking out for themselves, so I don’t think we would have any chance unless we decide to use a different label.

Many of the smartest and most successful SEOs have moved out of the SEO industry and are now web publishers building online brands for themselves. If you do great SEOs for others then eventually building your own sites and brands is a must from a profitability, income diversity, and a credibility standpoint. I still love the SEO field, but realize that it is not the path toward highest earnings for most as a service based model.

So there you have it. I hope some of those answers were as helpful and enlightening to you as they were to me. If anyone is on the fence about learning the ropes of SEO, I encourage you to check out the SEO training offered by Aaron. It’s worth every penny. Also, consider reading and subscribing to his SEO Blog and his new pay per click marketing blog.

I’d like to thank Aaron Wall for taking the time to do this interview and I look forward to meeting him at PubCon this year in Las Vegas.

Should you jump into social networking to promote your business? And if so, with so many options available, how do you choose which social networks to participate in?

Benefits of Social Networking

I’m not much of a supporter of diving into every new or large social networking environment or fad to promote a business. However, social networks do have some benefits that make them worth considering as an addition to your online PR efforts:

1. Social networks and microblogging services can serve multiple roles with a single tool. For example, you can network with colleagues, while also promoting offers or information to clients and potential clients of your company.

2. Social networking is cost-effective. Most networks are free to join.

3. Social networks and microblogging services can help you get news or a message out very quickly to a targeted audience.

Problems with Social Networking

Despite its benefits, there are also some drawbacks to social networking for promoting a business.

1. Social networking can be a productivity killer. Many businesses simply try to do too much - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, etc. The multiple updates aren’t always reaching different audiences, and it’s a waste of time that could be spent elsewhere if you’re simply targeting the same groups with the same messages, but in different locations.

2. It’s easy to get too personal, or too off-topic, when social networking, Twittering, etc. You may divulge more information than you wanted to (or than you should), and once you’ve said it, you can’t take it back. The instant gratification factor also makes it easier to communicate without thinking things through; contributing to negative “Web wars” at times.

3. The bulk of the population still hasn’t embraced these technologies, meaning your target audiences may not yet be well-represented there.

Choosing Social Networking Services for Your Needs

There are good things about social networking for PR. There are negative things as well. So how can you strike a happy balance? How do you choose the best social media communication tools for your business, without over-extending your resources to reach only a small portion of your audience?

1. Target, target, target! It doesn’t matter what the largest social network is if your specific audience isn’t represented there. Niche social networking tools may be a far better option than simply going with networks that always seem to be getting the buzz. For example, no network yet beats Myspace for promoting to musicians. If you’re trying to reach an adult audience as opposed to teens, you may be better off using a service like Gather.com. If you want to network with other professionals in your industry, LinkedIn might serve your needs more effectively. There are also smaller social networks targeted to very specific niches (webmasters, photographers, etc.). There’s no reason to try to “do it all.”

2. Understand the numbers. Don’t join a social network simply because they say they have X number of members. Those numbers mean absolutely nothing. What you should care about is not the total membership, but instead the “active” membership (and those specifically within your target audience - it goes back to targeting).

3. Get to know a network’s policies on promotion, as it applies to your plans. The last thing you want is to be labeled a spammer. Understand that these tools are more about networking, building relationships, and communicating than blatant promotion, as in marketing and sales.

No matter how deep you decide to delve into social networking and / or microblogging, always make sure you’re making the best use of your time, and reaching your intended targets.

As part of the Visa Business promotion, Visa are offering $100 USD in advertising credit to facebook users/advertisers. To get the free credit all you need to do is…

Log into facebook and add the Visa Business Network App. Once added, Facebook will send you a coupon code with instructions on how to add the credit to your account.

Perfect if you want to test the waters on facebook and perfect if you’re already spending a fortune with them. There’s more to PPC than just the big three :)

Seems like Alexia was WAY ahead of me finding this. Also, Master Mulley is running a competition for the best stats on a facebook campaign. Have a look!

UPDATE *** I just received an email from Visa letting me know that this offer has now expired.

Thank you for promoting the Visa Business Network’s $100 Facebook ad credit on your blog –we appreciate your support!  The ad credit program was very successful and I wanted to let you know that it has come to an end as of March 18th (the free Ad Credits was a promotion for the first 20,000 activations by small business owners).

Anyway, for those of you who use the Google Website Optimizer and for those of you considering using it for this competition, there are some unpublished problems with the tool that you should be aware of. From a very trusted source who wishes to remain anonymous:

As you have seen from my CC’d emails to youI have been having a battle with Google regarding the web page optimizer and data discrepancies. Until recently they just denied the problem was on their end.

I can now share two things with you that are very important moving forward when implementing WEB OPTIMIZER:

• 1. When entering the URLs of the test pages be very careful not to paste a blank space in at the end of the URL. It is almost impossible to check once the URL is entered and totally screws up optimizer reports.
• 2. Be aware that there is an issue that Google has tried to hide.The Web Optimizer (WO) code can conflict with the Google Analytics (ga) code. The work around is discussed below.

The following was the eventual reply/workaround from Google:

We suspect that you are seeing conversion discrepancies because your conversion page contains instances of ga.js and urchin.js for Analytics and Website Optimizer, respectively. Having both codes on one page can cause reporting issues. To smooth out the discrepancy, please modify the ga.js code for use with WO, rather than adding a call to urchin.js as well.

Please have a look at the following article:
http://www.google.com/support/websiteoptimizer/bin/answer.py?answer=77075

Option 2 will soon be phased out soon, so please only focus on Option 1, which details how to update your Analytics ga.js code to run for WO as well. Hopefully this is straightforward and corrects the issue. Keep in mind that we’ll have to focus on data from the date of the code correction going forward…

To those of you using Google Website Optimizer and are noticing anything strange, double check everything above. I know this is a little off the general topic of this blog but the issue has been a constant source of headaches and inaccurate reporting for months now.

* Source and Google rep names have been removed.

With PPC, you can get detailed demographic data, hourly conversion data and of course what we are going to touch on here… typo conversion data.

PPC data comes with a huge bonus, conversion data. If you bid on typos, you can see what typos are actually converting. While the volume is usually a lot lower, over time, this conversion data can be very valuable in optimizing for organic search engine rankings.

Lets use the screenshot here as an example. If you were presented with this data, you can see that the search term “londkon hotel” over the past year and a half has had 314 conversions. With each conversion being valued at $80, that’s a little over $25000 in revenue for this “fictional” company.

If this “fictional” company was to organically optimize their organic rankings for for the search term “london hgotel” they would probably have seen zero results. If they had optimized for “londkon hotel” they would have seen some fantastic results. Assuming the organic number one position gets (a conservative) double the number one PPC result, that would be an additional $50,000 in revenue for this company. That’s just for one search term! More than likely, they wouldn’t have organically optimized for ANY typos.

Caveat: Bidding on typos in AdWords and Yahoo will usually result in a poor quality score for those keywords.

Now, if we take this data and write a press release, an article and a blog post all containing links to the company site with the anchor text “londkon hotel” that would probably be enough to rank their site for that search term seeing there is much less competition for it. Organic search engine optimisation without conversion data for each keyword is not where you want to be focusing your efforts. Most online companies engaged in active search engine marketing know that and focus on their core keywords. This leaves the competition in the typo landscape for that niche much easier to compete in.

So there’s another good reason why SEO and PPC compliment each other. So while you competitors are eating each other alive in the PPC Pirahna tank, take a step back and see how you can take advantage.

Before we start, here are three tips to save you time and get you the most out of your PPC campaign using this guide:

1. Download the free AdWords Editor tool from Google.
2. If possible, create a new account for your content network campaigns.
3. Download the free KeyWordPad tool from GoodKeywords.

We will first start off creating our campaigns in AdWords because the tools available make for easy creation here first and AdWords makes it even easier to export your completed campaign for use on other PPC networks. I would strongly advise against using AdWords starter edition if you can help it as it encourages “lazy” and hence poor performing account structure.

Step 1) - Account Structure Determination

The first step is to understand how your account will be structured. It is usually best to consider the product or service that you are offering at it’s most granular level and create your account like a tree. So if you have a site selling a software product or products, you should create a new campaign for each feature. For example, if you are selling some sort of image editing software, you should have a different campaign for “image editing” and a different campaign for “photo editing” and so and so forth. Inside each of your campaigns you should have generic ad groups (like a “cheap image editing software” group and a “buy image editing software” group) as well as an ad group for all the features relating to the root keyword (image editing). This may seem blindingly obvious but you’d be surprised how many advertisers just lump everything into a “software” adgroup with the default “campaign #1″ name. The tree should branch out immediately, more like a bush. So keeping image editing as an example, a single campaign will look like the attached image. Note, there are actually a few in this example.

Caveat. Each account is different. Splitting your account up into as many campaigns and as possible will give greater visibility but less general manageability. Find the right balance for you.

Step 2) - Keyword Research

The second step is keyword research. There have been a million posts on a million blogs about this topic, so I won’t go into it. Let’s just assume that you have generated a nice keyword list for each of your ad groups using your favourite keyword research tool. Wordtracker, SEO book’s KW tool, Keyword Discovery and HitWise are all great tools. Each has individual pros and cons but for now, compile your list an move on. We will expand on this later on in the campaign setup but for now, we should have as big a keyword list as possible with all the keywords and phrases not related to your business taken out and put in a separate “negative” list/file. We will also use this at a later stage in the setup.

Tip. There are literally hundreds of different ways to go about getting your first keyword list. Lisa Barone has a great article on KW research here. If you are new to PPC advertising, I suggest you read that before continuing.

Step 3) - Set Up Campaign

The third step in setting up your PPC account is creating a new search network only campaign. I wont go through the steps to create a new keyword targeted campaign but please look out for the options that are not set by default. The first setting you need to change is the network settings by removing the check from the “Content Network” checkbox. The content network can be very valuable so I do not recommend ignoring the content network completely. We will set up a new content network only campaign later or in another account. You also need to make sure that your ad serving option is set to “rotate” so you can split test your ads and your delivery method is set to “accelerated”. The last option may not apply to you if you are working with a very small budget, but in general, you want to max out your budget initially if you can afford it to get some numbers to work with.

Caveat. The search network is the only network we will be working with in this post. The content network is very valuable and should not be ignored but it should be treated separately. For now, we want to focus on the search network.

Step 4) - Build A Negative Keyword List

The fourth step is creating a new keyword list. A list of terms you do not want your ads triggered for. Google has recently removed/hidden it’s negative keyword builder so have a read of our negative keyword tips. You should have at least a few terms already from building your keyword list in step 2. You also know your business so sit down with your colleagues for 5 minutes and brainstorm some negative words too. Another tip is to run a search query report in AdWords if you are already running a PPC campaign and mine the negatives out of that. You can also go into your analytics package and look at what keywords people are finding your site for and take negatives out of that. For those queries in the search query report that Google does not want you to see, have a read of apollo SEM’s guide to extract all the data. Once you think you have all the negative keywords you can think of, add them to your campaign immediately. In my opinion no campaign should ever start without negative keywords.

Tip: Do a search for your main keywords on Google. Look at the first 50 results and try to identify possible negative keywords from the sites that are listed that are not related to your business.

Step 5) - Create Your Root AdGroup & Ads.

What we need to do now is create a default, generic adgroup and ad. The ad should be action oriented and describe your product. Create your ad with strong words and use our guide to link them words with a strong call to action. This ad is only going to be our default ad for setup. We will not be using this ad in production. It should accurately reflect your product or service so you do not start off with a poor quality score. So assuming we are setting up the “Image Resize Software” campaign, we create an ad with “Image Resize Software” in the title and at least once in the ad copy. No need to tweak just yet, this is only for setup. We like to call this initial adgroup “Campaign Name Root”. What we need to do now is dump all the keywords from our keyword list into this adgroup. There could be thousands, that does not matter. We will separate them all further on. The important thing is to setup this root campaign and have all the keywords possible thrown in. Once setup is complete, confirm all your actions and your campaign will go live. Pause this campaign immediately. We will be doing a lot more work on the campaign so we do not want it live.

Caveat: You may notice that a lot of your keywords have a poor quality score in this situation. This is normal. While you may not see this if your account has a lot of history, if your account is new or previously performing badly, this is common. We will fix this at a later stage.

Step 6) - Download Your New Campaign & Split It Up

Now we really get to have some fun. If you have not done so already, download AdWords Editor and download your account containing your new campaign with the root adgroup. What we need to do now is use the “keyword grouper” tool within AdWords editor to group our keywords by theme (Check the screenshot to see how to access this tool). When given the option to “copy text ads from a template” select yes as we will use our default root text ad for now. Finish the process and you will have lots of ad groups divided into common “themes”. Upload the new campaign with the newly separated adgroups to Google and log out of AdWords editor for now.

Caveat: When using the keyword grouper too make sure that you do not exlude “stop” words, especially the word “in” as this will prevent AdWords Editor from creating the “in” adgroup which usually refers to local searches. Local or location specific searches can be some of the most valuable.

Step 7) - Manually Create New Ads For Each AdGroup

The next step we need to take is to go back into AdWords and create new and custom ads for each adgroup. If you are stuck for time, create a minimum of two ads per group. If you want to start off strong, create at least four ads for testing. It is absolutely essential that we use the “theme” keyword in in our ads titles. AdWords editor makes this easy by naming the adgroup the same name as the “theme” word. The “theme” word should also be used in the ad copy if possible and absolutely in the display URL as either a “fake” sub directory or a “fake” subdomain. The reason for this is so that AdWords will assign a decent initial quality score to your keywords and so that anyone searching for your keyword will see the exact keywords they searched for bolded in your ad. You should set the destination URL to either the category/product page or if you have the time, an individual landing page for that product and keyword combined. Make sure that your ads are compelling, are grammatically correct and have a clear call to action. You may also want to take this opportunity to create some Dymanic Keyword Insertion powered ads.

Tip: If you do not want to or do not have the time to create an individual landing page for each keyword, use PHP (or any other server side scripting language) to dynamically insert the keyword into the general landing page for this adgroup.

Step 8) - Expand Your Keywords

At this point we like to go into each adgroup and use the AdWords keyword too to expand our keyword list. Copy all the keywords from your adgroup and paste them into the keyword tool making sure the “use synonyms” box is checked. The AdWords keyword tool will give you a list of possible other terms you might want to add to the adgroup that you may not have thought about (as well as give some additional keywords for your negative list). In some cases, you may also want to use the in built keyword pad tool to duplicate all your keywords using different match types. A lot of times different match types cost different prices and convert differently. Once you have a packed up your adgroups with relevant keywords, you are almost good to go.

Caveat: It’s always wise to build one campaign at a time and build your keywords and adgroups slowly. If there is a problem or a problem setting you will not have to spend hours manually going through all your hard worked on campaigns fixing a problem you could have found early on with patience.

Step 9) - Duplicate,Track, Monitor, Succeed.

Once you have all your search campaigns ready to go, your final step is to make sure that your analytics package is installed correctly and that your ads are showing up in the countries you are targeting. Insure that your conversion tracking is working correctly and place a test order if necessary. Once you are sure you are setup correctly, you can now duplicate your campaigns for content network use (Simply copy and paste in AdWords Editor) and for use on other PPC networks. Please note that your campaigns will almost always perform differently on the content network and on your other PPC accounts. You should modify your bids and check your status on these accounts individually.

That’s pretty much the typical setup for each of our campaigns. This may seem incredibly basic to some of our readers but time and time again we come across accounts that are so badly put together that it shocks us the owner continues to use it in the hope that their results will change.

People continuously ask, “Does Adwords/PPC Really Work?” and the answer is an overwhelming yes! As long as you are doing it right! Do you have any PPC setup tips that have helped you get the most from your PPC campaign?

The beta version of the Analytics Reporting Suite brings Google analytics to your desktop in a visually striking way along with a slew of additional functionality that’s just not possible with the standard web based version of Analytics. According to the official site:

The Analytics Reporting Suite brings Google Analytics to the desktop.
It’s an Adobe AIR desktop application that delivers the same advantageous as Google’s web version but with a richer experience and extended functionality.

While the developers are still trying to decide on an exact UI design (they are looking for public votes on this) what they have so far is pretty.

The ability to switch easily and compare different accounts.

Fantastic animated and FAST reports.

Some nifty cross segmentation features.

By far the best feature though is the integration with Google maps for use in the geographic location reports. The application is completely free at the moment and will be free for standard users when it comes out of beta. The application requires you to download Adobe Air but it is completely worth the small, 11MB download. More screenshots can be found here.

Watch the brief video on Youtube here to some of the other little features. Try it out for yourself and see how much fun analytics can be. If you don’t think analytics is fun, well… you probably would not have read this far. Let me know your thoughts on this handy new tool.

RedFly LTD are sponsoring the “Best Blog from a Journalist” category and are happy to announce the longlist…

• On The Record
• Present Tense
• Harry McGee
• UnaRocks
• Emigration etc
• Pricewatch
• The Sigla Blog
• Kathy Foley
• Richard Delevan

• Karlin Lillington
• David McWilliams
• Sarah Carey
• Haydn Shaughnessy
• Red Mum
• Community Voice Musings
• Crime Always Pays
• Nadine O’Regan
• John Collins

Best of luck to all the nominees and I am sure it will be a great night even though not everyone will win. There has been a facebook event for the 2008 Irish Blog Awards set up too. If you are on Facebook, come on in. Looking forward to seeing you all there.

The Harbour Master in Dublin’s city center will play host to food, drink and talk that was once a pipedream in our normal social circles. Kindly sponsored by the most fantastic hosting company in Ireland, Blacknight. If you can make it we will be meeting at 7:30PM. This is an open event and anyone can attend. The more names we can all put faces to the better. If you work with anything web related, please feel free to come along. A good time is guaranteed to be had by all*

The confirmed attendees are as follows:

Cormac Nolan ;)
Louie
Richard Hearne
Mark Walsh (I can’t wait to print out Google paid link guidelines and show to) ;)
Dave Davis
James Larkin
Allistar
Eoghan McCabe
Ken Stanley
Ciaran
Gavin Doolan
David Behan
Micky Wall
Gavin
Michael Flanagan

There is a continued discussion on the Irish webmaster forum here. Special thanks to Gavin Doolan for kicking this all off. Not too sure if any of the ladies are confirmed yet? I hope to see all you guys there.

*This is not a guarantee.

Because press releases are increasingly being used for their SEO benefits, many business owners assume that more is better, or that they should be on some kind of set press release distribution schedule. That’s generally not the case.

Sending too many press releases can actually damage your company (or site) reputation and credibility. Here’s why:

• You’re very likely targeting a similar, if not the same, audience with each press release you send.
• Sending multiple newsworthy press releases over time can help to keep your company’s name fresh in their minds.
• Sending too many press releases just for the sake of sending them (as opposed to disseminating real news) will also keep your company’s name fresh in their minds… just probably not the way you’re hoping for.
• If you put enough garbage in front of people, you’ll end up with a sort of “boy who cried wolf” syndrome when you have real news. Members of your target audience will now recognize your name, and immediately attach it to images of “fluff” instead of news, and you won’t get the coverage you otherwise might have. You’ll put yourself on the fast track to being ignored.

That’s not to say that a schedule won’t ever work; only that you shouldn’t send out a weekly press release just for the sake of doing it. In some cases it does work. Here are a few examples of cases where regular press releases may not have such a detrimental effect:

• Regular contests – If your company runs a monthly contest, and it’s big enough to be newsworthy (giving away a $10 prize each month really wouldn’t justify a press release each time), then there’s nothing wrong with sending a regular press release for each one.
• Regular product launches – I used to work with a company who released a new product every Monday. They would issue a release for each product launch, because each product (in this case new t-shirt designs) was directly tied to something relatively newsworthy that would appeal to their target audience.
• Regular research or reports – If your company conducts research and issues public reports on industry issues, and you tend to do this on a regular schedule (as in serious research, and not something like a casual Web poll), then you shouldn’t hold off on announcing your findings through a press release just to avoid regular distribution. It has news value, and in this kind of case, a regular schedule may even give people something to anticipate if you become known for their quality.
• Regular charitable efforts – If your company is involved with a long-term charitable endeavor, and you’re making significant progress (such as in raising funds for an organization) on a regular basis, it might be worth mentioning repeatedly (for example, if a company raised $10,000 for a charity in January and then $15,000 in February, sending a release each month probably won’t hurt).

The key is to know your audience. Know what they’ll care about, and try to issue press releases that will appeal to them – remember, you want them to help spread the word. The trick isn’t to send a lot of press releases for results… it’s to actually make yourself newsworthy. As long as you do that your press release distribution schedule won’t become an issue.

If you find yourself almost never having something newsworthy to say, start putting some thought into things you can introduce to fix that (get involved with a charity, run contests, participate in important events, etc.). Every company (or website, organization, or individual) has the capability of becoming newsworthy. Don’t let your chances pass you by.

Caveat: Many advertisers think that they do not need to use negative keywords if they are only advertising using exact match keywords. While this may be true to an extent, it is important to still use negative keywords on the content networks. Exact match should also be used in conjunction with phrase and broad match to expand your keywords list.

1. Your Own Data.
Your own analytics can be an amazing source of negative keywords. Look at not only your PPC data but your organic data too. Print out a monthly keyword report and highlight those negative terms. If you are unsure of any, do a simple search for the keyword and see what results pop up. You might be surprised. Don’t forget to run a search query performance report on your PPC account to make sure your ads are not being triggered by terms you don’t want them to. The guys over at ApolloSEM have a fantastic article on extracting your search query data that Google doesn’t want to give you.

2. Google’s Keyword Tool.
Use the free Google keyword tool. Paste in your keywords and make sure you select the “Use synonyms” checkbox. You may be surprised what keywords show up that Google thinks are related to your product or service. Also, paste your URL into the “Website Content” box to see what the tool thinks what your site/page may be about. Check the “Include other pages on my site…” checkbox to get a more rounded view. Make a list of words you are unsure of.

3. Organic Search Results.
This may seem blindingly obvious, but try setting your search results to display 100 results. Search for your main keywords and notice the results that have absolutely nothing to do with your product or service. Visit those sites and take down negative keywords. Run those sites through the Google keyword tool too. Leave nothing to chance. Think about words people would be using to complain about your product or service or show it in a poor light.

4. Adsense And Other Ads.
Do a search for your keywords. Look at other advertisers PPC ads. Many may be completely unrelated or triggered by one of your stem keywords. There are so many advertisers that allow their ads to be displayed for completely unrelated or downright silly terms. Don’t be one of them. Also, try dropping an adsense unit into your page or site as a test. See what advertisers are displayed. Make sure your keywords are not displayed for keywords relating to their product (unless you have the same product!). Be as anal as you can and don’t forget to run the sites you find through the keyword tool again.

5. Use A Thesaurus.
Try running your main keywords through a thesaurus. There is no way you could possibly know every single synonym of your main keywords. A Thesaurus is not only great at expanding your negative keyword list but also your main keyword list. Find variations of your variations. Ask friends and family that have nothing to do with your product or service what words they would use to search for your product and run them through the thesaurus too. If you are advertising in a competitive space, missing a single negative and having your ad displayed for a search that will never convert can be extremely expensive. You might not even find out for weeks if your PPC management company are not monitoring your log files. Don’t find your negatives the hard way.

6. Obvious And Industry Related.
Try using your own knowledge of your industry and product. What terms are you certain people will be searching for that are either not related to your product or service or that are related and that you don’t provide? Sit down with your co-workers and brainstorm for ten minutes. Again, be thorough and leave nothing to chance. If you do not know your industry (you do know your industry right?) or product well enough, visit the manufacturers website or give them a call. Ask your customers if you need to. What words are similar or spelled similar to your product or service name? Also be aware that new products are being released every day. Set up a Google alert for your keywords.

7. Anti Tire-kicker, Penny-pincher & Freeloader Terms.
There are many terms that you will want to add to all of your campaigns to prevent your ads being shown for searchers at the beginning of the buying cycle, who are looking for the cheapest option or for searchers who are outright trying to steal your product or service. While your business may be competing on price, I think it would be safe to say that you do not want your ad being shown for searchers looking to rip you off or complain! Solomon Rothman has a great list of keywords that can start you off. Remember to use common sense when generating your negatives. If you offer a free trial or a free product, do not blindly use the negative keyword “free”. Use what applies to your business. Some of the negatives Solomon offers are:

Problem Negative Keywords

problem, problems, warranty, returns, parts, complaints, complaint, sucks, suck, hate, protest, indictment, illegal

And of course some freeloader related ones negatives to get you started too:

Technical Negative Keywords
warez, crack, serial, serials, cracks, rss, xml, hack, hacks

So there you have it. Seven simple ways to build a super negative keyword list to increase your CTR, improve your quality score, increase your conversion rate and give you a higher return on your ad spend. This is by no means an exhaustive list on how to create a negative keyword list but it’s a good start. Feel free to share your own negative keyword generation tips in the comments below.

• “Press releases don’t work.”
• “Press releases only help big companies.”
• “Press releases aren’t as good as [fill in the blank].”
• Common Complaints About Press Releases

Here are a few common complaints I hear from people who aren’t happy with the results of their first press release (and how I tend to respond):

Complaint 1: It was too expensive.

Response: I usually ask where they spent their money. Hands down, the biggest expense is distribution for most (often an upgrade package with a distribution site like PRweb). I then ask why they didn’t take advantage of free or inexpensive options, especially with their first release. It’s not uncommon for me to hear that so-and-so (their press release writer) told them they had to use one package or another to get results (usually the same kind of PR person who’s advocating the same distribution model for everyone – bad idea – or taking in affiliate income from the distribution source). So moving forward, I tell them to look into other, cheaper distribution options (as long as they still reach their target readers), and know the qualifications of whoever they’re working with.

Complaint 2: No one covered my story.

Response: Did you actually have something newsworthy to say? In many cases, the answer is no. (For example, launching a new website is very rarely newsworthy in and of itself.) Something else I ask is how long ago the release was distributed. Remarkably, most are complaining within a day or two of distribution because they’re not seeing pickups or backlinks. The reality is that those things can take a while to show up (especially if you’re tracking them yourself, as you’ll be at the mercy of the indexing schedule of search engines).

Complaint 3: My press release didn’t bring me much traffic.

Response: Let’s look at some common reasons you may not be getting traffic. Did you have any earth-shattering news that’s going to drive people to click over to your site in masses even though it’s your first release and they’ve likely never heard of you? Not likely. Did you have a well-written press release? It’s possible. But in this day and age we have everyone and their brother calling themselves a press release writer without any qualifications. Stick to hiring real professionals, or invest the time into learning how to write a press release for yourself. Last question… how did you distribute your news release? If you just threw it onto a distribution site or two (or two hundred for that matter), that explains a lot. Contrary to the belief of many, the average Joe just doesn’t search for their news from press releases. They have specific news sources they trust, and they go right to them. Did you do anything to target trusted news sources tied to your own target market? Chances are that you didn’t.

People need to understand something before they decide to jump into using press releases to promote their businesses or websites:

Press releases are just one tool, of many, in a larger PR campaign. On top of that, they’re a tool that needs to be used repeatedly over time in order to fully realize their potential (building awareness, maintaining an image, and overall exposure and name recognition). So don’t put all of your eggs into one basket by spending a small fortune on your first press release, because chances are that you will be disappointed with the results.

Always think about your long-term goals when using PR. Who are you trying to reach, what message are you trying to convey, and what tools can you use to get that message out to your audience? If you’re serious about using PR to help your business, you need to broaden your outlook a bit beyond news releases. Here are a few other examples of PR tools to include in your overall PR campaign:

• Media Advisories – These are used to actually invite members of the media to an event to cover it in person.
• Op-Eds – These are opinion pieces that run opposite an editorial in a newspaper or other publication.
• Letters to the Editor
• Blogs
• Newsletters

Figure out what types of tools are going to best reach your specific target audience(s), and then put together a solid PR plan using them to complement each other.

The new extension can be downloaded here. The installation guide and usage tutorial can be found in the video below.

If you have any further questions, feature requests, bug reports or general feedback, please feel free to leave a comment. I also highly recommend taking a look at Vittorio’s other Marketing Videos. Enjoy!

The evening we arrived was relatively quiet. The whole journey there was long and tiresome. Myself and SEO Richard checked into the Las Vegas Hilton where the average guest age was ~75 years old. We ate and headed to the Wynn bar early where we met Stephanie and Eric for some early drinks. Stephanie is a very smart girl and I think she would make an excellent blackhat ;) Met lots of others the first night but decided to head to bed at about 2am to prepare for the coming week.

PubCon Day 1)
First day of PubCon was pretty good. The sessions were high level enough to keep interest. The one thing that I noticed was that while the sessions were good, considering the relatively high level of knowledge of most of the attendees, the sessions would be more suited to junior SEOs or regular marketers moving into the search field. With that said, I really enjoyed the Social Marketing 101 session with Rand Fishkin, Neil Patel, Michael Gray, Cameron Olthuis. Neil’s presentation was simple, funny and I will be stealing some of his techniques. The quality score session was also great even though there was at least one very rude person in the audience. The guys at efrontier really know their quality score too. Looks like MSN are also going to be getting pretty transparent with their QS factors. That night, I played Poker at the Wynn for the rest of the evening. Thanks to Richard Kershaw for introducing me to the biscuit beer.


PubCon Day 2)
Day two of PubCon was decent too even though I only attended one session, SEO and Big Search. Maile Ohye from Google got a pretty hard time in the Q&A (and rightly so) about international targeting and the right way to go about it with Google. As usual, no definitive answer was given.

That evening was absolutely fantastic. The “meet the Google Engineers” was a little weird but I finally got to meet up with Glenn “Don Juan” Reeves, Adam “I’m an entertaina” Green and Chris “I’m the brains behind the operations” Kata. These guys really know their stuff and it was a pleasure spending the rest of PubCon with them. Also got to meet the guys from the Rubicon project who were just plain nice. Thank for the invite to the party guy, sorry I didn’t make it… you can blame Tim Mayer!

Next up was the fantastic SEOmoz werewolf game. This was incredibly valuable and I got to meet, and kill the lovely girls Carrie and Mary from Blizzard Internet Marketing. Also got to “win” with the most talented black hats of them all, Tim Dineen (The irony here is that Tim is as white hat as they come). Sorry Michael for accusing you, all is fair in love and war ;) Made the “winners” table where I got accused and killed by Rhea “turncoat” Drysdale. Until next time my worthy advisary. Thanks to Andy for the image.

Back at the Wynn bar I finally got to meet Lisa “sevens” Ditlefsen who I have to say is probably the nicest person I have ever met in the search marketing world. Also got to meet Rob “I’m a dodgy geezer” Kerry. Don’t forget our deal Rob! I also had the pleasure of meeting the lovely Jane Copland, Ciaran, Stephen, Gareth Cheryl and Nicola and the other fantastic search marketers from the UK. (Thanks for picking the scarf Ciaran, your fashion sense is questionably above par).


PubCon Day 3)
Day three of PubCon I only attended the “tools of the trade” session and went back to bed.

The PurposeINC charity poker event. This was an absolutely brilliant event and was great for networking. Unfortunately, many players had never played poker before and I was knocked out with 3 tables remaining. (Who calls an all in with an 89 off suit?!!!). Dave Klein, you did a really great job. It was a pleasure meeting you and your lovely wife. By the way,my back is still in bits! Congratulations to Dan who won the tournament.

That night I had the pleasure of meeting Todd “it seemed like a good idea at the time” Malicoat, (what’s talked about in Vegas, stays in Vegas) Dave, and Lauren “twelves” Vaccarello as well as Mr Disco and Stephen. Pleasure meeting with you guys and Happy birthday CK. Clubbing in tangerine and less than healthy breakfasts are the future of PubCon. Thanks Todd for picking up the tab.


PubCon Day 4)
After two hours of taxis around Vegas, I finally found the PubCon networking event. I stayed for about 20 mins, said my teary goodbye to Richard Hearne, finally got to meet Julie and went for Dinner with Anita and Andre and Mike from WordTracker. It was a pleasure sharing sushi with you guys. Anita, you are one of the smartest people I have ever met. Rob and Lisa, next time, be a little more “European” and stay awake.

That night, myself, Mike and Andre played more poker at the Wynn. I won $4150 (on a 1-3 table!) and cashed out. Unfortunately all first class seats home were taken but at least the cost of trip was more than covered.

Conclusion

All in all, I had a really amazing time. It was fantastic to be able to “talk shop” while in a social environment. Getting so many search marketers together in a city like Vegas is sure to be fun, whatever way you look at it. While I do not think I would pay for a conference pass the next time, I will without a doubt be attending the next PubCon. I had a really great time and I want to thank everyone who made it so. Sorry if I missed anyone.

Normal (useful) posting will resume shortly.

The first reason I chose PubCon was… well, because it’s happening in Las Vegas. If you have never been to Vegas before, it is one really fun place to be. Even if it is for “work”. Vegas is as cheesy and tacky as it is portrayed on television and as long as you accept that, there is fun to be had. Vegas is also quite hot, even at this time of the year and coming from Ireland, this will be a welcome change!

The second reason is that there will be literally thousands of SEOs, affiliate marketers, online advertising agencies, bloggers, merchants and PPC management companies there. It can be very difficult to “talk shop” in a social environment especially in Ireland as there are so few actually in the industry at the moment due to its relative youth. When you go out with your colleagues on a work night out it’s fun to moan about management, the direction of the company and your competitors and your industry in general. Unfortunately, we cannot. Attending an event like PubCon will let us vent to others in the industry and maybe be vented about!

The final reason I am attending a convention so far from home is of course the networking I would like to do. Being from Ireland, there are countless people in the industry I have been in communication with, in some cases for years, that I have never met or even spoken to. This is the best opportunity.

There are lost of events happening over the week but I am really looking forward to the following in particular:

The SEO charity poker tournament is being held in the Venetian hotel. The event is for a worthy cause and will be a great way to network in a not so “here’s my business card, let me give you my elevator pitch” way. Some pretty big players in the industry will be at this event but just because they are smart marketers, does not mean they know the difference between pot odds and implied odds! My hat goes off to DK over at PurposeINC for going through all the effort of organizing this event. I am really looking forward to this as I played in the Venetian the last time I was there and it is an incredible venue. While I do have a fondness for playing the odd bit of poker and I do plan on entering the IPC after Christmas, I think I am up against some stiff competition.

If anyone going would like to sign up for the charity event, you can do so here. If anyone would like to win their entry, SEOISH is running a competition here. I am very much looking forward to playing on the same table as Mr. & Mrs Rhea Drysdale, Neil, and Vanessa. Best of luck to you all!

The SEOmoz Werewolf Search Spam game. The guys over at SEOmoz are holding a “search marketing” themed version of the very social game “werewolf” we all might have played as kids. This is some pretty great linkbait and will introduce a lot more people to each other than a few drinks at the bar ever could. The game itself is a form of warewolf substituting marketer roles and spammer roles for ware wolves and villagers. The messers (Do those in the US use that word?) over at SEOmoz are known for being fun, social and pulling stunts all the time. This one should be full of surprises.

We have already signed up for the event and should whatever team I am on win, I will be signing up for an SEOmoz premium membership.

We will be staying at the Las Vegas Hilton as the official conference hotel was completely booked out. To those PubCon attendees staying at the Hilton, please feel free to say hello. The first drink at the hotel bar is on me.

Finally, I would like to thank The best hosting company in Ireland for making some pretty amazing special arrangements for us when we are over there. Let’s just say I was not expecting any VIP treatment or private party invites at my first PubCon. The Thai lunch is on me!

See you in Vegas!

Google Global now allows you to view organic and paid Google search results as they appear in almost any location on Earth.

Whats New?

• View paid and organic search results as they appear in different cities.
• View paid and organic search results as they appear in different regions.
• Open all results from countries, cities and regions in multiple tabs for easy comparison.
• View paid and organic search results from a specific IP address.
• View paid and organic search results from any US ZIP code.
• View paid and organic search results from different language results pages.
• Custom advanced saved searches.
• Firefox V3 compatible
• Many more…

Important: V2 is completely rewritten and is NOT compatible with V1. Please uninstall V1 from the addons menu before installing V2. Please report any problems in the comments.

Usage

Google Global can be used in two ways. From the context menu or from the toolbar.

The easiest way to use Google Global is to simply do a search for something on Google. When you see you search results page, simply right click anywhere on the search results page, select “Search Google Global” and select what geographic location you would like to see the results from. It is as simple as that.

Google Global also allows you to customize your toolbar with an additional button as opposed to another memory hogging toolbar. This allows quick access to the functions of the Google Global extension. To add the button follow these simple steps:

1) Right click an empty area on your Firefox menu bar

2) Locate the Google Global icon and click and drag the icon to your toolbar. We like to drag the icon right beside the “Home” icon. (The one that looks like a little house).

3) Drop the icon wherever you see fit on the toolbar. It’s up to you.

4) Start using Google Global button to easily switch between search results from different countries.

Options:

There are a few options within Google Global that you can change depending on your personal browsing habits. You can open the search results in a new tab, useful for comparing results, you can add as many locations to your Google Global search options and you can also depersonalize the search results shown by Google Global.

I would like to express my deepest thanks to Joost, Richard, Danielle, Gary, Vittorio, and Tom for all your help with the beta testing. You have been such a huge help you have no idea.

This extension has been a labour of love and we have worked very hard on improving and testing it. One “feature” that did not make this version was the ability to download the extension from the official mozilla.org site. As anyone who has ever developed a Firefox extension before will know, the sandbox waiting time is quite long. If anyone who uses this extension finds it useful and knows what the extension sandbox is, please leave a review and hopefully the next version will be available from the official site.

If anyone has any feedback, bug reports or feature requests, please feel free to leave them in the comments below.

If you like this free Firefox extension, please help us spread the word

The PR industry has been notoriously bad at enlightening clients and potential clients about public relations and its value to a business. At the same time, Internet marketing is a flourishing field, where marketing professionals treat PR as a tool under their larger umbrella. That’s the message most potential online PR clients get.

Online public relations and Internet marketing are similar, no doubt, but they’re incredibly different in their most important aspects:

The Message
In Internet marketing (as in all areas of marketing) the message is designed to drive sales or directly increase revenue in some way. For example, the marketing message of a large online book store might be that they can offer the largest selection and cheapest prices because of their bulk buying power.

In online PR (and Public Relations as a whole) the message isn’t designed to be directly promotional. PR messages can vary from showing that a company cares about a specific cause (or show core values of the company) to news messages put out by the company.

The Targets
In Internet marketing, you have a “target market.” These are essentially the people your company is selling something to (or if you run a website monetized by advertising, your target market might be potential readers that you’d monetize through those ads).

In online PR, you have a “target audience” instead. A target audience (sometimes called a “key public” or “stakeholder”) can be any group that has influence over the company. The target market is just one target audience. Others might include residents of the area where a company is located, government officials, stockholders, and employees.

The Tactics and Tools
One of the reasons many Internet marketers assume they understand online PR is the fact that the two disciplines often use a few of the same tools. However, they use those tools in different ways. Here are tools and tactics used in Internet Marketing and online PR.

Common tactics and tools used in Internet marketing:

• Paid advertising (banner ads, text link ads, etc.)
• Link exchanges, free Web directory submissions, blog comments (link-building activities)
• Affiliates
• Sales letters (and other sales copy)
• Article marketing (to drive affiliate sales, traffic, or backlinks)
• Search engine marketing (paid search placements)
• Blogs
• Social bookmarking sites
• Social networks
• Podcasts / Internet radio shows
• Sales, coupons, or other discounts
• E-books
• Reports / white papers
• Direct mail campaigns via email (for promotional purposes)

Common tactics and tools used in online PR:

• Press releases / news releases
• Op-eds / letters to the editor (for online publications)
• Online newsrooms and media kits
• SEO (to build awareness through organic search engine placements)
• Interviews
• Blogs
• Articles (used to build exposure and expert status more than directly pushing sales or traffic)
• Podcasts / Internet radio shows (if not purely or mostly promotional)
• Reports / white papers
• Email newsletters
• Social networks

With so much overlap on the tools and tactics used in online PR and Internet marketing, it’s no wonder there’s confusion. The real key is in the way each tool or tactic is used in those different capacities to reach different audiences for different reasons.

Internet marketers rarely look at more than sales, traffic numbers, etc. Online PR professionals look more at the “big picture” of how your company is using those tools to communicate with all groups that may have some influence over you (such as building and maintaining an overall image).

In most cases, one doesn’t really understand how to effectively perform on both fronts, which is why it’s important for business owners and others to understand the difference so they can choose the best service providers to help them reach their goals (or to work towards reaching those goals independently). The best option is always to strike a balance between the two.

There is a lot to be said, both good and bad for the various keyword research tools but there is no better data than your own (organic) conversion data. Remember Google Analytics? You set it up on your site many moons ago when you were writing your first “welcome to our website” page? Did you remember to set up your goals? If you never set up goals, go do it now. Goal tracking is exactly what it says on the tin. It could be a sale, a form submit, a request for more information, an ad click or a new RSS subscription. When you define your goal, analytics lets you track that goal like a just like a PPC conversion but for all traffic, not just PPC traffic. I’ll briefly run through a quick goal setup below. There is usually a lot more to it (e-commerce value tracking) but for the sake of this post, I’ll keep it simple.

1) Set Up Your Goal.
Set your goal name and the page defined as a conversion for you. Think of the page you are going to install your AdWords conversion tracking code on. The beauty here is that you don’t even need to add any additional code onto your goal page. It’s already there (assuming you have Google Analytics code on all pages of your site).

2) Set Up Your Sales Funnel.
The next part is optional but highly recommended for analyzing your visitor behavior throughout you conversion path. You basically only add the pages a visitor must go through to complete a conversion. On an e-commerce site, that is usually the shopping cart pages. It’s as simple as copying and pasting the URLs from your address bar.

3) Locate Your Organic Keyword Data.
When your goal has been setup and you have left it enough time for analytics to collect the data, you can now go and “mine” your exclusive keyword list for the top keywords. Log into Google Analytics and go to the “keywords” submenu under the “Traffic Sources” parent menu item.

4) Find The Best Keywords To Target.
Now you will be presented with a list of all the keywords (both long and short tail) that visitors typed in to find your site. What we need to do now is find the keywords that we know actually convert. Google has made this very easy for us. Above the list of keywords, there is a “Goal Conversion” tab. Simply click on that and you can sort through all your keywords that resulted in a sale, signup or whatever you defined as a conversion when setting up your goals.

5) Mine The Gold.
On the Goal Conversion tab you can organize your keywords by their conversion rate. See where I’m going with this? View 500 keywords per page using the drop down box below the keyword list and arrange your keywords by goal conversion rate. Now it’s a simple matter of copying all your converting keywords (that you can see clearly convert) and pasting them into your own preferred keyword editing tool or a spreadsheet.

6) A Final Check.
When you have all the keywords modified and pasted into AdWords, use the duplicate keyword finder tool in AdWords Editor to make sure the keywords are not in any of your other campaigns, assuming that you already couldn’t stand the temptation and created your campaigns first.

Conclusion
There you have it. A rock solid keyword list that your data shows converts. You even get to see accurate volume information on them (unfortunately not actual searches per month and the likes). Why start off with a list of keywords from costly keyword tools when you already have the best keyword tool right under your nose for free?

It should be noted that I have simplified the process a little above and you should be aware that organic and PPC traffic does not always convert the same. Just bear that in mind. Also, it might be worth pointing out that a lot of the keywords that you copy from your analytics, you will be ranking organically for pretty highly already.

So what are you waiting for? If you have not set up goal tracking in your analytics package, go do it now. If you are looking for the best possible keyword list to kick start your PPC campaign use your own data. You can then expand on your list as you grow your campaign.

*** Hat tip to Mr Gary Lee for the inspiration for this post.

When I first logged in this morning to do the morning account checks, I noticed the following message in the AdWords campaign dashboard:

1) Campaign Selection.
Content Exclusion Beta? Sounds interesting! I am a huge fan of the AdWords content network. The ROI from content network campaigns can be many times that of the search network if done right and is a fantastic way to source private advertising deals. I asked one particularly generous client if we could test the new tool and she graciously agreed. This client has allowed us to test every single new tool that Google has released for advertisers with complete free reign, so I was very grateful. The initial screen allows us to select which campaign we would like to work with. Fortunately, we separate all our content network and search network campaigns.

2) Site Exclusion Tab.
After about ten seconds analyzing the campaign, the content exclusion tool came back and offered us three tabs. The first tab, the site exclusion tab offered us a list of sites to pick from and exclude. What is interesting here is that only 24 sites were offered for exclusion and no data was provided as to why these particular sites were presented. As I am the account manager for this particular account, I can tell you now that the sites listed here are all poor performers. What is even more interesting is that all but three of these sites were already excluded using the site exclusion tool. Some feedback was promptly sent to Google regarding this. For those who do not regularly run placement performance reports, this would appear to be a wonderful time saver.

3) Topics Exclusion Tab.
Next up was the topics exclusion tab. Now it’s starting to get really interesting. When running a large campaign, it is almost impossible to go through every page and domain listed in large placement performance reports and visit each site to check the content. In fact, the only time we actually visit the site is when there is a large enough sample size with at lease some medium-poor conversion data. I have no idea how Google groups adsense advertisers accurately into topics considering you can use adsense on multiple sites once your initial site has been approved.

3) Page Types Tab.
The final tab is the page types tab. This is probably the most interesting and from reading the AdWords feature request forum threads on webmasterworld, one of the most requesed features. This tab lets you exclude a variety of “types” of pages your content network ads will appear on. The most notable here are domain ads and error page ads. Many advertisers have been crying out to exclude these types of pages from their content network campaigns and their prayers are finally being answered. The other types of exclusion are of the social networking and media sharing sites. From managing this particular campaign, I can tell you that social networks such as MySpace and video sharing sites such as YouTube, are without a doubt, the worst performers. Domain Ads and Error Page Ads are by far the best performers (See below).

Be Careful!
Loren Baker makes a very important point over at search engine journal about using this tool and I would like to add further to it. Just because the “general consensus” is that certain pages, topics and sites perform poorly doesn’t make it true in every industry. For example, many advertisers claim that Domain Ads and Error page ads perform worst for them. A quick placement performance report on this campaign for the past two weeks shows a different story:

Conclusion.
My initial impressions of the new Content Exclusion Beta tool are pretty good. It is great to see Google taking feedback (Thanks AdWordsAdvisor!) from real AdWords users and implementing the requested features. While this tool is a very handy “overview” tool it is absolutely no substitute for running regular placement performance reports, using statistically valid sample sizes and making good decisions based on that data weather or not to exclude a site from your content network campaigns. I think this new visibility will allow more advertisers make better content network choices and force publishers to create better content to entice advertisers. It is still a little early to tell, but I think this tool will produce some decent results. I’ll keep you posted with the results we get over the coming weeks.

The only thing missing from this new tool in my opinion is search network partners data. While I am aware this is a content network specific tool, it would still be nice to have. Diorex has a wonderful post on this new AdWords transparency where he states:

“Bottom line - the more segmentation and options you give sophisticated buyers, the more they will spend with you. I will spend it in different ways and in different places within the network based upon my conversions, but in the long run it will help Google earn more from me.”

I couldn’t agree more. All in all, I applaud Google for the new tool and their steps to improving advertisers control and experience. Way to go Google!

While I am aware that it is not an award as such, I would like to thank Damien Mulley for his expertise in Journalism and the help he has given us regarding our press relations recently, Adrian Weckler the editor of the Computers In Business section for the opportunity and Sarah (Still our mystery guest) for her patience this past two weeks.

The article is specific to how Irish businesses can use AdWords to compete on a global scale and the reasons that Irish companies, especially SMEs are failing to take advantage now while the larger companies are waiting for budgets to be approved and research to be done before embarking on paid search and online marketing.

Regular (read helpful) posting will resume this week.

What is Media Relations?

Surprising as it may be, no one seems to misrepresent media relations more than public relations folks. There’s a common misconception among some in the industry (as well as with plenty outside of the PR industry) that “media relations” and “public relations” are synonymous. They’re not.

Before we can tackle what media relations is, we need to understand what public relations is. Defining public relations has always been a challenge, so let’s tackle it. Public relations is a management function by which a company, government, organization, or individual creates, builds, and maintains a positive image with their publics (which could include customers, residents living in the neighborhood of a business, government officials, etc. – anyone that can influence or affect them).

Media relations, on the other hand, is a component of public relations rather than being its equivalent. You can look at the media as just one outreach tool for communicating with a key public or audience. You have to keep in mind that the media isn’t the only tool available to reach your publics. You can reach your target audience with your message through media coverage, but you can also reach them directly.

Why do people, even in the industry, get it wrong? Misinformation is everywhere, including in trusted sources. For example, if you’re a small business owner interested in learning about how you can use public relations, you would be misled by a generally trusted source in your niche in Entrepreneur.com, which states:

“Public Relations Definition: Using the news or business press to carry positive stories about your company or your products; cultivating a good relationship with local press representative” - Source

That definition completely limits public relations to media relations activities. So let’s make it even simpler. Media relations is how you handle your relationships with members of the media, and public relations is how you handle your relationships and image with members of the public directly (or any sub-group of the public). The media can help you to communicate with the public, but they’re not your exclusive means of doing so.

Media Relations on the Web

Traditional media relations is often called a “push” concept: you’re shoving your self-promotional messages in their face to put it bluntly, and members of the media rely on that to some degree to find news worth covering.

One of the big reasons some are touting things like social media as the killer of media relations is that we now have a “pull” model in place where journalists can find news on highly specific subjects on the Web, and will subscribe to things like RSS feeds if they’re interested in news from a specific organization. They essentially have a better ability to pursue the news (as in the base angle) rather than having it fed to them.

The primary tools in online media relations are online press releases, online newsrooms, and email. All are used to offer information members of the media may need when deciding what information to disseminate to their audience, such as bios, fact sheets, news, multimedia items, and more.

Media Relations v. Social Media: Round 1

It can be easy to assume that media relations will soon have no place on the Web because of advances in social media tools. The anti-media relations crowd seems to be repeatedly saying that public relations is now (or will soon be) about nothing but conversations; that companies, organizations, and individuals have to essentially give up their full control over their message and “engage” their publics through social media rather than “talking at them” through more traditional methods.

It sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Yet, I’d argue that PR has always been about “conversations,” even if on a more subtle note than now. In PR you’ve always had to listen to your key publics to understand their wants, needs, and motivations. Without knowing those things, you can’t effectively create a message that would influence their views or actions. It’s research. We’ve always done it. Now we just get to do it in real time.

We’ve also always continued the conversation (at least in a well-planned campaign) by evaluating the success or failure, and why our messages did or didn’t reach our audiences and influence them as we expected. Again, now we simply get to do that in real time by reading comments and responses directly to our news releases, reading rants or praises on blogs, etc. None of this is new. New tools (and even new efficiency) don’t equal the death of media relations.

Media Relations v. Social Media: Round 2

Another common argument in the case against media relations on the Web is the fact that between search engines, blogs, social networks, social bookmarking, and the host of other tools at our finger tips today, we have no use for the traditional media. The thought is that we don’t need journalists anymore to get our message to our publics, because we can do it ourselves.

Yes, it’s fairly easy to post a press release to the Web, where your end target audience can find it through Google, other search engines, or news aggregators, or to publish your news to a company blog where your audience can directly interact with you.

What these would-be-media-relations-killers neglect to tell you is that

1. It’s highly unlikely that the bulk of your audience is searching for their news through aggregators or reading your press releases directly. It just doesn’t work that way on a grand scale other than for a few highly specific niche groups. If you’re a social media company, it may work for you. If you’re a restaurant chain, it’s not going to happen in the same way (unless of course you’re facing a major crisis with your product, and people have already heard about it through the major media). That’s just one example. There are countless niches where the majority of your target audience simply aren’t embracing these technologies yet (and likely won’t before the “next big thing” in Web communication comes along).
2. It can take a lot of time, and a lot of effort (not to mention money and marketing) to build the kind of authority for your company blog, press releases, etc. that traditional media outlets have. People have trusted sources of information. The company the information is about usually isn’t going to be one of those trusted sources.
3. It’s often not as efficient. It’s a nice concept to believe that when you publish your information on the Web, you’ll reach a seemingly limitless audience. The problem is that the ease of it can make people jump into action without proper research in understanding their audience. Speaking of audience, let’s look at them for a minute. Is it really a bad thing to be picked up in the business section of a national newspaper, where you’ll reach a massive (yet highly targeted) audience? Do you think you’ll reach as many (again highly targeted) people using social media (and with the same kind of authority)? It’s unlikely, and it won’t happen for the vast majority of news put out this way. Banking on being the exception to the rule is bad business.

Remember, it’s easy for someone to talk about the “death” of media relations when they’re involved with social media and are riding their reputation on it. Being an online PR specialist myself, I’m certainly not suggesting that you completely ignore social media. Instead, I’d like to see more people ignoring the buzzwords and hype to focus on the amazing breadth of tools we now have before us to reach the people that influence how we do business. That includes traditional PR tools such as press releases (which are highly effective without the SMNR model as long as you learn to use them properly). Media relations isn’t dead or dying. It’s just changing.

Enterprise Ireland’s eBusiness Unit is organising an eMarketing workshop for clients on Wednesday, 24th of October 2007, in Croke Park Conference Centre, Jones Road, Dublin 3.

This event will focus on how client companies can use the Internet to market their products and services more successfully in international markets. It will be specifically targeted at those who work in business-to-business international marketing and sales or those responsible for their company’s online marketing strategy.

To those who have requested a coffee with me over the past few weeks as opposed to a full blown meeting, today would be perfect. I am really looking forward to speaking with all the Enterprise Ireland members. I hope everyone enjoys their day.