Consistency Key to Online Branding

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Online branding ruins everything you thought you knew about branding. It is no longer strictly a marketing activity for multinationals with million dollar budgets. Online branding is simple and practically free.

The internet allows businesses of all sizes to participate with their webpages, secondary sites, social media outlets, and company blogs. These areas are also exactly where it is important to establish a successful branding strategy. But how?

It is first important to remember branding is a lot more than a name and a logo. It is a philosophy encompassing the values and way of doing things. Branding alone can increase the perceived value of any kind of product by creating an image that depicts the product as more than its actual value. Gucci is just a clothing designer, but because of the image cultivated around the brand, their products are perceived as higher value than most others.

Ray Vellest, writer for Web Designer Depot, argues the most important aspect of creating this type of image is consistency. Making sure all of your messages are on point establishes an idea in potential customers’ minds.

People associate Gucci with luxury because they only present images of their products with luxury settings. The people in their ads are always dressed in some form of high fashion, and in an extravagant setting.

Similarly, Louis Vuitton has had a long running campaign of images of pop culture icons with their luggage, and they choose these celebrities carefully. Sean Connery, Madonna, and Keith Richards have all been in ads for Louis Vuitton, and the imagery suggests that of the “rebellious” upper class.

When bringing this strategy online, think digital presence consistency. Start with your username, or profile. Using the same username across the web is a big step towards creating brand consistency online. It brings continuity to interactions customers have with the persona or company through various methods.

Another method of establishing consistency is visually. You begin working with the company’s logo, keeping it absolutely consistent across all platforms. But it is also important to design a secondary logo that will fit within the square profile image space alloted by social media platforms. The second logo has to be a visual continuation of the first.

When interacting with potential customers online, you need to be keeping a consistent voice as well. Many companies have multiple people handling their social media accounts, but their voice needs to match the voice of the company. To do this, define your tone by finding one that matches your brand image. Law firms should maintain a serious and formal tone, while a record store, for instance, has more liberty to be less formal and maybe opinionistic.

By creating a consistent image all across the web, you can begin to cultivate the type of branding that huge corportations spend millions on every year. It is as simple as keeping everything focused in the same direction, and sending the same message.

 

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Tweaks to Bing Ads Improve Performance

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Bing Ads recently made Sitelink Extensions available to all U.S. users, which allows advertisers up to 10 sitelinks to their ads. This helps consumers navigate directly to their desired page, rather than landing on the homepage and having to find their way around.

As Pamela Parker reports for Search Engine Land, during beta testing, click-through-rates for ads with sitelinks improved by as much as 25-percent over standard ads.

In another tweak, advertisers no longer need to be logged in to use the ad preview tool.

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Search Is Still The Dominant Online Advertising Sector

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The latest research from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Pricewaterhouse Coopers, which examines the first half of 2012, finds that the biggest contributor to online advertising in the U.S. continues to be spending on Search Marketing.

With 48% of all interactive advertising in the first half of the year, search ads brought in $8.1 billion.  It is also 19% higher than during the same period of 2011.

Performance pricing, usually cost-per-click, remains the dominant pricing model and has continued to get stronger.

For graphs of the data, visit Pamela Parker’s write up over at Search Engine Land.

 

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The Value of Trend Line Analysis for Your PPC Campaigns

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In order to improve your existing online ad campaigns and discover new opportunities that you’re currently missing, you have to study the analytics. Trend line analysis is likely included whether you use AdWords, Microsoft AdCenter or any other platform and it saves you from poring over column after column of numbers. Instead, you are presented with an easy to read and, more importantly, an easy to digest report.

Matt Van Wagner has an in-depth report on different types of trend line reports and how to use trend line analysis at Search Engine Land.

Let’s look at some potential errors to avoid and how to make these reports work for you.

First and foremost, you have to understand the context of any report and be sure to enter proper parameters. If your reporting time is too short, you may see a graph suggesting a problem that isn’t really there. You may also notice a simple fluxuation of variables beyond your control and perceive it as a problem with your campaign.

Before making any changes, do some investigating. Take the guesswork out of online advertising and diagnose the problem. Then, you will know what needs to be changed, or what can be left as is.

Always keep your specific campaign goals in mind. For some, conversion rates improving but total conversions going down could be a problem. However, if it’s in line with that campaigns goals, then you’ll probably want to leave the campaign untouched.

Sometimes it’s what you decide not to change that will make the biggest difference.

With time, you’ll start to be able to recognize at a glance a graph showing the early signs of trouble. Be sure you understand not only what each individual trackable metric means, but also how they relate to each other.

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Google Announces Disavow Links Tool

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If you’ve ever received a notification from Google about a manual spam action based on “unnatural links” pointing to your webpage, Google has a new tool for you.

Links are one of the most known about factors Google uses to order search results, and they examine the links between sites to decide which pages are reputable. As you probably know, this is the foundation of PageRank, another of the most well-known “signals” Google uses to order search results. Google is concerned about spammers trying to take advantage of PageRank, and often they have to take manual action.

The notification you may have received in Webmaster Tools about those unnatural links suggests you got caught up in linkspam. Linkspam is the use of paid links, link exchanges, and other tactics like those. The best response to the message would be to remove as many low quality links as possible from your site. This keeps Google off of your back, and will improve the reputation of your site as a whole.

If you can’t seem to get rid of all of the links for some reason, Google’s new tool can help you out. The Disavow Links page allows you to input URLs which you would like disavowed from your site, and the “domain :” keyword will help you disavow links across all pages on a specific site.

Everyone is allowed one disavow file per website, and the file is shared among site owners through Webmaster Tools.

If you need assistance finding bad links in your site, the “Links to Your Site” feature in Webmaster Tools can also assist you in starting your search.

Google’s Webmaster Central Blog included a few quick answers in their announcement for the tool for questions you may have, noting that most sites will not need to use the feature in any way unless they’ve received a notification.

 

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Does SEO Limit Web Designers’ Freedom?

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Now as much as ever, the web design industry and the SEO industry are intertwined. The question that arises anytime a business industry and a creative industry become so connected is whether the business side limits the creative side or not.

Most in the web design industry will agree that SEO shouldn’t limit web designers at all. SEO is important, but limiting art isn’t necessary.

One of the most important things for web designers and SEO professionals to be concerned about is load times. Lots of designers want to make amazing headers, but these lead to slow load times. There are sites where load times do matter less. Portfolio sites should have plenty of quality graphics of work, but in these instances SEO doesn’t matter.

For commercial websites however, fast load times are essential because customers will go elsewhere rather than wait.

For those that think standard navigation practices limit their artistic license, think about this. The job of a web designer isn’t just to create an aeshtetically pleasant site, but to make one that is also functional and user-friendly. Breadcrumbs and easily accessible navigation systems make users happy, and it allows them to see all of the well designed areas of the site.

Overall, if you aren’t designing overly flashy sites, SEO shouldn’t be limiting your abilities as a designer. The latest SEO practices rely on quality content, and the designer’s job is to to deliver this content is a good looking package. If anything, SEO guidelines will help you understand how to create a site your viewers will like.

For some more pros and cons of the relationship between SEO and web design, Rean Jean Uehara has a great article at 1stwebdesigner.

 

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5 Ways to Build A Strong Relationship with Clients

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Sometimes, the determining factor in whether your work for a client will have a happy ending or not is simply how strong your relationship is with that client. By effectively communicating, making sure you understand their goals and using the right language, you give yourself the best chance to succeed.

Purma Virji has, what she calls, “5 amazing tactics” to build that strong client-consultant relationship. Check out her in-depth look at Search Enging Watch.

1. Learn from each other

In order to successfully fulfill the client’s needs, you need to be on the same page. Understand what they want out of the project. When you pitch ideas to them, back them up with reasoning and a cause-and-effect approach. Set realistic timelines that you both can live with. Be sure that they understand your language. Educate them so they know what’s possible and how valuable your work is.

2. Lines of communication open, not flooded

Your client wants to feel that their voice is being heard and they want to have access to you. However, allowing anyone involved in the process to contact you at all times will be too time consuming. Instead, set a communication schedule and stick to it.

Set a weekly meeting time where everyone involved has a chance to voice concerns and you have an opportunity go over timelines, new ideas and progress.

You should also send out regular updates to keep your client involved. Ideally, these short reports will answer any questions they might have before they come to you with them.

3. Be prepared when asking for buy-in

Do your homework and have metrics ready when asking for an increase in budget. You should know exactly how much time and funding will be needed for a specific project. Then, be sure to articulate why it will be worth it.

4. Prioritize

When first starting out on a project, your to-do list will probably seem pretty daunting. You want to knock out as much as possible and show your client that you are making quick, effective progress.

To do so, tackle the tasks that are short and simple but could yield big results first. Anything that involves a simple adjustment without weeks of testing should be at the top of the list.

5. Be honest and upfront about bad news

Mistakes will happen. Goals will be missed. You will not meet every expectation. If you handle bad news correctly, however, you can and will overcome it.

Send out a detailed email as soon as the problem is discovered. Set up a meeting if warranted.

When discussing it with your client, summarize the problem while including how much it is costing. Talk about what you’ve done to fix it, what is needed and when you expect to overcome it. Also, try to find the good that has come out of it. Maybe you’ve avoided potential lost time or discovered a new method of doing things or just gained some valuable knowledge.

 

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The Importance of Being First in the Results

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New research from Compete.com is suggesting being the first result on a SERP can make a huge difference from being second.

The analysis comes from “tens of millions” of consumer-generated search engine results pages from the last quarter of 2011. It also had some really interesting findings. 85 percent of all listings shown are organic, with only 15 percent paid search listings.

Out of the organic listings, 53 percent of clicks are going to the very first result, with the second result only seeing 15 percent, and all others getting even less.

Analysts from Compete.com summarize “since the vast majority of listings on a SERP are organic, and the majority of clicks are on the first listing, it’s imperative that brands strategy including constantly monitoring results due to the ongoing evolution of search engine algorithms.”

The paid results are also getting a large amount of clicks. Most specifically, ads in the top of the page perform very well, with between 59 percent and 9 percent of all paid results clicks. Ads on the right hand of the page however, get at most 4 percent of paid results clicks.

Overall, it is important to get your listings in the top position, if you want your page to be getting attention. For graphs and analysis of the results, read Miranda Miller’s article at Search Engine Watch.

 

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5 Tips to Stretch Your Modest AdWords Budget

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Chances are that your company doesn’t have piles of money to throw at advertising in order to get results. Most likely, you’re wondering how to get a big ROI from a modest to meager ad budget. Jeremy Decker has five tips for you, which you can read more about at Search Engine Journal.

1. Utilize lower ad positions

When you search for a specific topic or product, do you always click the first result that appears? I’m assuming you answered ‘no’ because I don’t know anyone who does.

With that in mind, you can take advantage of ad placements below the top three on Google and still see results, often at a lower cost-per-click.

2. Specific targets

Using general, one-word keyword will allow your ads to pop up more often. However, your audience in that scenario will rarely be searching for exactly what you offer.

Instead, use keywords that pinpoint what your business is. These ideally would be phrases of three or more words, which will probably include your location. Fewer users will enter those search terms, but the ones who do will be hoping to find a business just like yours.

3. High-converting keywords need their own campaign

Be sure to check out how each of your keywords are performing. When some separate themselves as ‘high-converting’, consider creating a campaign that includes only those keywords. This way, the most effective keywords will have a budget to themselves. Otherwise, less effective keywords could show up more and you’ll reach your cap without the heavy hitter getting a chance.

4. Display network doesn’t get conversions

Using the display network option in addition to, or instead of, search results will potentially spread awareness about your company to a gigantic audience, it usually doesn’t yield conversions at a high rate. If your ad budget is limited, it’s best to put all of your investment into search traffic rather than limiting yourself in order to invest partially in such a risky venture.

5. Location, location, location

It’s not just a key for real estate. AdWords allows you to track what cities your traffic and conversions are coming from. With this information, you can get the most of your budget by omitting your ads in locations where conversions are low. You can also create new campaigns specifically for your top performing areas.

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AdWords’ Policy Update Means Business

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In the past 18 months, Google has waged war against spammers. It began with their attempts to purify organic search rankings by introducing the Panda and Penguin updates. Now, with an AdWords policy update this week, Google has targeted those evil doers of the PPC game.

Ali Harris has an in-depth look at the changes at ClickThrough Marketing, but here’s a quick rundown of what you need to know.

Google’s goal is to improve the ad experience across the board, meaning only those with ill intent will object and most users and campaign managers will applaud.

By weeding out the spam, your Quality Score will likely rise and your cost-per-click will likely drop. But, you have to know the rules and follow them.

  • Your ads and keywords must be easily relatable to the landing page they point to.
  • If you mention a specific promotion or product in an ad, the landing page must feature it too.
  • No more throw-away lines like “Click Here Now!”
  • Just like in English class, poor grammar will be punished.
  • Keyword campaigns must be relevant and clear.
  • If your landing page has ads, they must be clearly discernable from original content.
  • No phone numbers
  • No email inbox look-alike ads

Essentially, you are expected to use common sense and be sincere in your advertising. If your goal is to trick users into clicking your ads, you will be punished.

Those punishments start modest but can become severe.

Campaigns that are flagged as not in compliance won’t run the disapproved ads until they are changed. If advertisers feel they were judged unfairly, they are able to submit their ad for review again.

Suspensions could be doled out to domains to temporarily stop their use of AdWords.

For repeat or serious offenders, accounts could be banned along with any related or future accounts.

Most likely, you’re already keeping tabs on AdWords metrics, particularly Quality Score. But now would be a good time to go through your campaigns with a fine-toothed comb in order to be sure you’re in compliance.

 

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