PlanWebs Web Design, Online Media & Marketing

Some web designs are truly so repulsive that they actually drive people away from the site and prevent them from returning. Both you and your web design company must avoid these situations at all costs. Otherwise you run the risk of allowing your reputation to be diminished or being labelled and avoided by clients and customers.

Web Design’s Scariest Backgrounds The background of your website is one aspect that you have control over and you can easily change or alter to suit your client’s needs. You must be
aware, however, that some backgrounds are simply not attractive at all. Some of these backgrounds that should be avoided at any cost are: Continue Reading »

When the research analysts at Hitwise, Nielsen, and Compete release their monthly search engine rankings, you can sometimes feel their pain in covering the same story over and over again.

Note that this list is random. There’s no methodology — no ranking by buzz, funds raised, visitors, customers, parties thrown at SXSW, or volume of schwag sent my way (though the schwag’s always welcome). These are companies that caught my radar at some point or another, whether through a news article, blog post, word of mouth, or personal contact from them, and they all shed a bit of light on where search is heading.

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Inside AdWords
Just when you thought you had a better grip on the whole AdWords Quality Score thing, Google throws in another curve ball. Landing page load times will now factor into an ad’s Quality Score.

Makes sense actually–as the length of time it takes for a landing page to show up truly does have an impact on the user experience. Using tactics like interstitials or multiple redirects are bad for consumers who just want to get to the point and find the offer, the product info, or make a purchase. The same goes for slow servers–as pages that take long to load are more likely to be abandoned.

Over the next few weeks, AdWords users will find landing page load time evaluations on the Keyword Analysis page in their accounts, and they’ll have one month to review their site and adjust if necessary. The load times will be incorporated into an ad’s Quality Score equation after that month-long probationary period–with poor load times leading to higher minimum bids, and vice versa.

Conversation Marketing
If you’re playing the PPC game, you should be bidding on your own brand name as well as its misspellings. Ian Lurie says it’s a no-brainer–as it’s a small investment that complements the much larger ones you’ve made to trademark your name and get your business incorporated.

“It’s cheap,” Lurie says, noting that the engines’ quality scoring and ranking algorithms make it so that your own company and product names are likely to be some of the cheapest keywords you can buy.

Buying your brand name can also provide “visibility insurance,” if for some reason you drop down in (or completely out of) the organic rankings. And lastly, if you don’t bid on your own terms, your competitors will–if they haven’t already.

ISEdb
SEO used to be about making changes to a Web site (like uploading new content or tweaking meta data) and waiting for the search engines to pull it into their index. With Universal Search, that wait-and-see approach is no more, according to Rob Aronson. “Now it is time to get pushy,” he says.

Getting your site to rank is about pushing your content to different places on the Web so that the engines can find it–whether it’s videos on YouTube, images on Flickr or news via RSS feeds or aggregation sites. Site owners can also push their content directly to the engines themselves, particularly when it comes to maps and other local info, as well as shopping listings.

Aronson also notes that Yahoo’s open-source “Search Monkey” initiative is part of this sea change–as site owners can push all types of info about their site (including things like rating and reviews, images and deep links) directly to the Web giant’s engine. “Now, more than ever, you need to be proactively pushing the appropriate information to the search engines,” Aronson says.

WebProNews
Jason Lee Miller is a bit skeptical about the value proposition of video ads showing up as search results. “At the heart of my reluctance is the thought that maybe the online audience does not behave quite like the offline audience,” Miller says–and he’s talking about how they respond to branding efforts.

“Despite that inherent trust that branding builds, many WebProNews small business-owning readers have reported that content (branding) ads do nothing for them, that they end up spending too much money for not enough directly measurable results,” Miller says. “So that makes me wonder if branding efforts online, though they should work in theory, are not working in practice the way they do offline.”

And if online branding ads (be they banners, rich media or video) aren’t helping to induce conversions on their own merit, how will they fare in the paid search arena–where click-throughs are good, but conversions are even better?

JenSense
If you’re a Google AdSense publisher, then you may need to update your meta tags–as these snippets of data can be the extra nudge needed to help your site attract more relevant, higher-converting ads.

For example, if you run a Web site for fashionistas that focuses on European designers, then including those designers’ names in your meta tags could help narrow the focus of the kinds of ads that show up. Your target audience will likely end up seeing fewer generic retail ads–which could lead to increased clicks and a higher payout for you.

What meta tags can’t do is help your site attract high-priced ads that are completely unrelated to your content. “It is worth remembering that meta tags are only an influencer to help target ads to content that is already on the page,” says Jennifer Slegg. “So stuffing mesothelioma into the meta tags of a puppy dog site won’t mean you will show those pricy mesothelioma ads instead of dog related ones.”

Information Week
Later this month, Google will begin weighing new factors in determining its search Quality Scores, which influence the placement and pricing of ads on across Google’s vast network. Excessively large Web pages, or Web pages served by slow servers will cost more to advertise. Also, ads leading to landing pages that take a long time to load will perform worse than ads linked to easier-to-load pages.

In a blog post, a Google AdWords team member explained the changes. “Interstitial pages, multiple redirects, excessively slow servers and other things that can increase load times only keep users from getting what they want: information about your business. Second, users are more likely to abandon landing pages that load slowly, which can hurt your conversion rate.”

In an email response, Google said the changes are only relevant to advertisers and would not influence organic search placement.

PromotionWorld
Brandon Cornett serves up a five-spot of steps for a quick Web site overhaul–one that can lead to increased traffic and visibility on the search engines within a few days.

It starts with keyword research–specifically, using a free tool like WordTracker to find the 100 most searched for phrases for a specific keyword or topic (like “gourmet coffee”). Scan the list and create a spreadsheet of the words that are most relevant to what your Web site is offering (i.e. “gourmet coffee beans” or “gourmet coffee gift baskets.” Armed with your list, go through your existing site content and add these relevant keywords to the title tags and body copy where they make sense. Then add at least five pages of new content that pertains to keywords from your new list–as you’ve likely found some traffic-driving, highly relevant phrases that you weren’t aware of, and had no content for.

Lastly, make it easier for the engines and users to find your Web site by creating sitemaps, and including a text-only footer menu where applicable.

Practical eCommerce
Spammers don’t just want to set up their own made-for-AdSense sites or PII-stealing Yahoo Search Marketing ads–they want to use your account to run scams too. Whether they burrow into your PPC account and set up stealth campaigns that you don’t notice, or go all-out and dump ridiculously high cost keywords in, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, the goal is the same–to get you to pay for their clicks.

Greg Laptevsky lists some steps you can take to prevent that from happening, as well as what to do if you get scammed. “Run keywords weekly and look beyond the first page,” Laptevsky says, as “many advertisers tend to ignore keywords that are not in their top 50 list.” Run reports to see if there are any unfamiliar ads in your account, and keep track of your average spend to see if there’s an unnatural spike. And always change your passwords each month.

If your account does get hacked, notify your contact at the search engine immediately. They’ll investigate and get back to you with a resolution. “Be sure to stay on top of all requests from the engine’s support teams and promptly respond to all messages,” Laptevsky says. “After all, it’s your fault somebody hijacked your pay-per-click account.”