Liberty Interactive - Search Marketing Blog

Groupon Gift Cards Launched for the Holidays – Get ‘Em Here

Liberty Tsighis — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:39:45 +0000

We think Groupon has done some pretty stupid things, but we also think they’ve done some pretty smart things too. For instance, this year they are offering Groupon Gift Cards which we believe is an absolutely brilliant idea and we are not ashamed to say buy them from us.

Purchase is available now:
Click on the banner below or follow this link to purchase Groupon Gift Cards.

Creative 404 Pages: Page Not Found What To Do?

Liberty Tsighis — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 22:29:59 +0000

One of the things we look at during our Search Marketing Site Assessments for clients, is the use of 404 pages no matter what industry you are in. We always recommend having a custom 404 page. A 404 page is when a user discovers a “page not found” on your site.

How does this happen and why should you care?
Well, it may seem like a completely elementary thing to put in place however if someone comes to your site from another site (i.e. they linked to your site – maybe a blog post or old web page). If there is not an appropriate redirect process in place the user will be sent to a “page not found” or 404 error. You have control over what gets displayed on this page and if it is a generic 404 (no branding just black and white) it can mean losing a visitor forever or you could help them discover the appropriate page they were looking for, thus keeping them on your site. Think of it providing a bit of customer service to your visitor – if they entered through the wrong door, you would want to show them the appropriate one or guide them to the location they were looking for.

While creativity and humor might get you far with anyone, it also helps to be…well, helpful. If your page is useful in guiding the user to the area or page they were looking for then you are more likely to create a better customer experience.

A few suggestions for your 404 error page:
- At the minimum have your logo and main navigation on the page, better yet use a page template from your site that will help customize it to your look and feel
- Have a link to your home page or better yet a listing of links to popular sections on your site. You may also want to provide a link to the sitemap and promote it as a “full directory of site pages.”

Here are a few examples of 404 pages that we think work while also maintaining the brand personality:

Thanks to fab404.com for some great examples – check out others to for more ideas.
P.S. We’ve got some work to do ourselves. Do as we say not as we do .

Oh No Daddy! GoDaddy Redirects Cause Major SEO Issue, now what?

Liberty Tsighis — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 17:54:15 +0000

If you are a GoDaddy customer you will want to read this.

Part of our weekly SEO routine for clients is to check search engine Webmaster tool accounts, in doing so we usually find something interesting, disturbing or exciting. This week, we noticed that a domain that we permanently redirected to a new one back in December was showing as a top inbound linking site to the domain in which is was supposed to be redirected.

We asked ourselves, “How could this be?” Was the site moved to a new host without our knowledge? Was the domain being redirected properly?

And so our investigation began.

Our Findings:
This client is a GoDaddy customer and back in December we had permanently forwarded the domains in GoDaddy’s Domain Control panel which at that time issued a proper permanent redirect telling the servers and search engines that this was indeed a permanent redirect (otherwise known as a 301 redirect).

Today, when we checked the server headers it said that the redirect was a temporary redirect (otherwise known as a 302 redirect). We went a step further to investigate some of the other domains that also had been setup as permanent redirects in the GoDaddy system. And to our dismay, they are all showing as temporary redirects.

We logged into GoDaddy to make sure the permanent redirect settings were correct for our domains AND…they were.

We then called GoDaddy to understand why the domain settings marked to permanent redirect (301) were showing as a temporary redirect (302) in our third party checking tool.

The GoDaddy tech support person told us that “all of their forwarding now only issues a temporary 302 redirect” and if we wanted “to make it a permanent 301 we would have to do that at the hosting level.” They also could not tell us what type of redirect would be issued if we actually selected temporary redirect as an option or why there are two choices if they both do the same thing.

There are three situations for when you would use redirects:*

If you are launching a new site and switching to a new domain.
If you have deleted, removed, changed or are planning to change web page URLs.
If you have a list of URLs that are derivations or misspellings of your company name/main site domain that you want to forward to your main site.

*Redirects can be configured for site domains and specific web pages/URLs.

There are two types of preferred redirects for these situations:

a) 301 which is for files that have been permanently moved.
b) 302 which is for files that have been temporarily moved.

Why are redirects such a big deal?

In the SEO world, redirects affect everything. A redirect tells servers, search engines and browsers how to handle the domain when someone requests it. If a page is deleted, a site is relaunched, or a page is renamed it is important for both SEO and usability to make sure you have those old pages going to either a new relevant page or appropriate URL.

If URLs/domains are not configured properly you can lose valuable search engine visibility. Keep in mind that people and sites are linking to your content and inbound links are one of the key influencing factors to search engine rankings. Use of 301 redirects should be used to preserve search engine rankings and any inbound links to that particular URL. This way search engines will index the new address instead of keeping the outdated URL. It is the best option to avoid negatively impacting search engine ranking.

The reason you don’t want to use a 302 redirect is this signals to the search engine that the old URL should be maintained in the index as an active URL, it just has been moved for now. This causes none of your new URLs to be indexed.

If a search engine doesn’t know where to go and runs into a dead-end URL/page this can impact your search visibility not to mention your user experience if they follow a link to a URL that no longer exists.

How do I fix my forwarding domains in GoDaddy to be properly configured for permanent redirection?

Note: If you are redirecting a domain, you DON’T want to just switch the DNS to your main site – this will cause a mirrored site and create a duplicate content issue for you. Search engines will not like that and you may get penalized for it by search engines.

The first step is to remove or turn off the forwarding in your GoDaddy domain control panel. Go to Domain Management and find the domain, and go to Forwarding and click on Manage next to it. Edit to turn off.
If the web site you are redirecting to is hosted with GoDaddy, add the domain as an additional domain to the root through the Hosting Control panel.
If the web site you are redirecting to is NOT hosted with GoDaddy, change the DNS records in the Domain Control panel to point to the IP address of the site you are redirecting to. Add the domain as an additional domain in your host’s control panel. Or your virtual hosts file.
Add the following code to the .htaccess file for the main site. Make sure to create a RewriteCond and ReWriteRule line for each domain you are redirecting. Make sure to redirect both the www and non-www version of the domain if needed. And always immediately test your .htaccess to make sure there are no errors. .htaccess can be tricky, better to be safe than sorry. So always backup your .htaccess before making any changes.

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^newdomain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [nc,r=301]
RewriteCond %{http_host} ^olddomain.com [nc]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [nc,R=301]
RewriteCond %{http_host} ^www.olddomain.com [nc]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [nc,R=301]

It is wise to speak with an SEO consultant prior to making your site live to the redirects of old pages and domains are appropriately handled. If you are relaunching a site or looking to increase your online visibility? Give us a call regarding your SEO.

Sending a Successful Email Marketing Campaign: Closing the Gap Between Desktop, Mobile and Web

Liberty Tsighis — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 22:58:33 +0000

Email marketing seems simple, and for the most part it is. Yet, many companies and clients create their emails and fail to browser test or email client test to make sure their emails are rendering consistently across these platforms. This results in an oblivious and convoluted customer experience that leaves the customer asking “Why does this email look like this?” Delete. Mark as spam.

Email service providers are no cake walk either. Many of the most popular ones with large marketing budgets to acquire customers fail to meet best practices when it comes to delivery.

Sending a successful email marketing campaign relies on 3 things:
1. Clean HTML code that renders consistently across the major email clients
2. A reputable email service provider like Campaign Monitor, ExactTarget
3. A solid testing plan cross-browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari) and email client (Outlook, Yahoo!, Gmail,Hotmail) Each has its own quirks to deal with.

To help create a successful email campaign, Campaign Monitor published a guide that allows email marketers to see the various elements that affect how emails are rendered across 24 email clients. They learned that support for even simple CSS varies considerably between clients, and even different versions of the same client.

Download your copy and view the comparison table here. It covers 24 different email clients and all the popular applications across desktop, web and mobile email.

Thank you Campaign Monitor!

Note: Outlook (27% of total market share) and iOS Devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) (16% of total market share) are the most popular email clients.

Internet Marketing Jobs Open in Phoenix

Liberty Tsighis — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 23:11:47 +0000

In the last few weeks, I have seen and heard from several agencies and companies in the Phoenix area looking for online/web/Internet talent. I am so excited to see so many job openings come available that I wanted to put together a quick post on a few of the open positions in hope of referring great talent to the Phoenix area or at least diversifying the current pool.

Cole Capital is looking for a Marketing Manager eBusiness
view job posting

Thunderbird School of Global Management is looking for an Online Marketing Specialist
view job posting (pdf)

Terralever is looking for A LOT of folks from developers to designers to account, sales, and admins
view job postings

Off Madison Ave & Mighty Interactive are looking for a PPC Manager
view job posting and other open positions

Sitewire is looking for an Account Manager
Position is very recently available, no posting on the Sitewire site as of yet but we do have the job description (pdf).

RIESTER is looking for an Integration Manager
view job posting

6 Ways To Get Your Google Places Page to Rank Higher

Katie S. — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:13:26 +0000

Whether it’s your own company or a client’s business, having a Google Places page is key to visibility within Google. In 2009, Google was in the deal room with Yelp to purchase the local review site but the deal fell through. A few months ago, Google revealed their own “Yelp-like” product, Hotpot. Google is making a big push into the local market with plenty of attention going to location-based applications (such as Foursquare, Facebook Places) it is important that you are maximizing on your own visibility within the most popular search engine especially now that Google is placing more of an emphasis on local results and blending them with organic search results.

We recently had a chance to hear local search guru, David Mihm discuss the ins and outs of local search that are useful for organizations of any size.

Here are 6 Ways To Get Your Google Places Page to Rank Higher:

Claim your listing if you haven’t. How can you tell if it is claimed? Complete a search in Google Maps, that is the easiest and quickest way to locate your listing. Look in the upper right corner about a quarter of the way down the page (see image below). If your place exists and is not claimed, go through the steps to claim and verify it – then read the rest of this post .

Reviews are more important thank you think(we’ll keep hitting you over the head with this one over and over). Reviews are one of the key factors that can help your ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs) as well as the local listing results that show up within the SERP.
Tip: Put together a strategy to get a steady flow of reviews coming in monthly rather than a bunch all at once and then nothing at all. Google likes to see consistency. One way to do this is through your social media outlets. Another thing to do is if you use Groupon or any coupon sites try to capture the emails of those who purchased and follow up with them to have them write a review of their experience. Of course we’d all like positive reviews, but as long as you have a good product and good service you should receive good reviews.

When claiming your business make sure your title is representative of your business- do not stuff it with keywords. You want to use descriptive words. You might be able to get away with one or two keywords depending on your company, but remember the algorithm Google uses for local results is not the same as the one used for organic results.

YouTube video’s may help your rank so if you have them add them to your local listing. Also fill it with images. Tip: To optimize your videos add a caption file to your videos, title and description.

Use the maximum number of description categories available (currently 4), use one default category and then create custom categories for the remaining fields. When creating a custom category try using the statement “my business is a [fill in the blank]” as your format. Do not put any geographical terms in as a category- that’s a big no-no.

Multiple branches and/or specialty divisions with the same address should have individual pages. If your business is a large business with multiple branches or specialties all at the same address and there are more areas than categories, don’t worry you can list them separately. For example, if your business is a hospital with different specialty areas – each one of those specialties can have its own Google Places page as long as each area has a different phone number they can and should be created and listed individually.

A big thanks to David Mihm for his support and sharing this great information with us.

Arizona Stands United

Liberty Tsighis — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 05:51:07 +0000

Despite political or religious beliefs, we are human beings first. Today, I post this message out of respect to the victims, heroes and families of this past Saturday’s devastating tragedy in the state of Arizona. I am reaching out to Arizonans and all Americans to take a moment today (or more) to acknowledge how lucky we are to be alive, to be American, to be loved. President Obama has called for the Nation to take a moment of silence on Monday, January 10 at 9am MST. I regard this post as more than just a moment, but words in writing that we can stand by. I also ask Arizona citizens to support each other, to respect one another and to condemn this act.

We support by sharing KPHO’s Arizona United. Please join me in sharing this message.

Local Series: Getting Your Business Listing Setup in Search Engines (Part 2)

Katie S. — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 05:03:28 +0000

If you missed Part 1 of Getting Your Business Listing Setup in Search Engines start there first.

The verification process can sometimes be the most challenging part of setting up your local business listing in search engines. The process can be easy and at the same time difficult for numerous reasons. Below we share with you the various ways to verify your account and what we have often experienced when setting up listings on behalf of our clients during the verification process.

GOOGLE (aka Google Places, this listing will also show up in Google Maps)
www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter

Creating a listing: We recommend you use a general email account with your company domain name. For example, marketing@companyname.com. You do not need a gmail account to setup your listing on Google Places. Google prefers you use an email address with the company domain in it as further verification and legitimacy of your listing.

Easy way: phone call. Google will typically place a call within minutes that will give you a PIN number. The PIN number will need to be entered during setup, this is the key step to get your listing verified. We have experienced both never receiving a call and a PIN number left on voicemail. The good news is Google will let you request a PIN again. If this does not work you will ultimately be left without the call option and going the route of the slow way – postcard verification.

Slow way: postcard. You’ll need to keep an eye out for the postcard, it will be small and look like junk mail so be paranoid. This postcard will contain your PIN number. It can take up to 2 weeks to receive the postcard so make sure you have kept your login information handy and in a safe place.

View a 45-minute video on How-To set up your business on Google.

BING (aka Bing Business Listing Center)
https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx

Easy way: phone call. This process is exactly like Google’s except that Bing provides you with the PIN number and you enter it over the phone when they call you (versus receiving the PIN over the phone and entering it online).

Slow way: a letter or postcard will be sent. It takes almost two weeks to receive the letter. It is typically dated just a couple days after you’ve submitted your local listing.

YAHOO! (aka Yahoo! Local Listings)
http://listings.local.yahoo.com/

Yahoo! sends an email confirmation as verification of your listing. Keep in mind this email will be sent to the person who is listed as the contact in the contact information you filled in, which should also be a general email address for your company.*

*Keep in mind that Yahoo! is no longer a search engine. Currently they are still maintaining their local listings and offer a basic and an enhanced listing (you pay for it).

Local Series: Getting Your Business Listing Setup in Search Engines (Part 1)

Katie S. — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 23:47:48 +0000

With attention surrounding geo-location services (like Foursquare, Gowalla, Groupon) and significant enhancements in local business listings in search engines (Google Places, bing). We wanted to focus on creating a “Local” blog post series featuring helpful ways for businesses to garner further visibility online utilizing these offerings as well as what to be aware of when participating. We’ll focus on local business listings and a few free marketing ideas for you to take advantage of. So, let’s begin.

Setting Up Your Local Business Listing on Search Engines
When doing local search it’s best to start with the big three. While Yahoo!’s search results have now been replaced with bing’s search engine results, many things are still in tact – this includes business listings for local search. For the most part all three search engines (SE) ask for the same information for a business.

We’ve compiled a quick list to help you prepare for setting up a local search account for your organization:

Basic Information:
- Business name
- Address
- Telephone number (some SE’s allow multiple phone numbers)
- Toll free number (if applies)
- Web site (some SE’s allow multiple websites)
- Email (some SE’s allow multiple emails)
- Fax

Background Information
There are a good amount of sections that can be filled out; you want to fill in as much information as you can. Google recently made some big enhancement to how local search results from Google Places appears in their search results and it is highly recommended to fill in as much information as possible to help your results. Make sure to put in everything you can think of that represents your company.

This includes:
- Description (Google limit is 200 characters)
- Image (logo or any images, great way to incorporate Flickr if client has images there)
- Video (great way to incorporate YouTube if client has videos there)
- Hours (if apply)
- Payment methods (if apply)
- Brands carried or sold by client. Great way to insert keywords that are specific to your client’s products and or services.
- Specialties. Great way to insert keywords that are specific to your client’s products and or services.
- Slogan or tagline.
- Other requests are for professional associations, languages spoken, parking, and more.

Category Details
There are categories to select that best represent your business. You want to ensure that you select the best choice categories as these may help with your visibility within organic search results. Some of the categories can be hidden and you may have to browse to find what is most appropriate to make sure you aren’t missing any. Some SE’s allow more category entries than others. Try to fill in as many categories as you can, this too will be affected by Google Places search results.

At this point you will want to review all of the choices you have made and all of the information you have entered. Make sure to double and triple check everything as editing in the future may not be as easy as you think. Once you have thoroughly checked all of your information and are happy with your location search entry, proceed to the verification process.

Stay tuned for next week’s post on the details of the verification process and detailed requirements.

5 MUST Do’s In PPC Management

Mike Swan — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 17:56:12 +0000

This article first appeared on agencyside as A Day in the Life of a PPC Manager where Mike Swan, Director of Search Marketing Strategy at Liberty Interactive Marketing is a guest columnist as well as a panel speaker on topics for search marketing strategies.

Often when asked how I spend my day I answer “living the dream”. While I sometimes get a chuckle from those who are also fans of the movie “Wedding Crashers”, I usually get a look of bewilderment. While I get much satisfaction from this, sometimes there is an unlucky soul that asks me to elaborate on what dream I am living. It is those people who actually enjoy the “geek speak” to whom I am dedicating this post.

Professional PPC management has two facets; it is one quarter creativity and 3 quarters creatively analyzing data. Those with no aptitude for numbers need not apply; there is little chance for success without a highly analytical mind. Efficiency and processes are of paramount importance, especially as the number and complexity of the accounts increases.

Here are 5 things that must be attended to on a regular basis. How regularly depends on 1) traffic of the account and 2) industry.

1) Are All Systems Go – Rule number one, know what campaigns should be running and which should not. Realizing that a credit card was declined or the account balance has been depleted a week after it happens is never a glorious moment. Avoid it. I review two types of reports every morning. Both are Account Reports that contain the results for all clients. The first is the month to date. This gives me an overview of how the accounts are performing, what my budget utilization is and serves as my quick reference guide for broad inquiries on the health of the account either to the client or a team member. The other is the Yesterday report. This tells me what happened the day before, so if I see any weird results, like no traffic, it allows me to identify a possible issue within 6 hours or so of it happening. This can be a lifesaver.

2) Watch your Positioning – Know where your sweet spot is and manage to it. I also make sure the account average is in a narrow band. If it starts dropping, is it one aspect of the account or is it account-wide? This can help you identify competitive trends or Quality Score shifts before the account train wrecks.

3) Utilize Search Query Data – I like to keep a lot of broad match terms in my accounts to keep a good pipeline of search query data. This gives you a look at search volume, it helps you identify terms that you may want to go after. It also can show you some glaring holes in your campaign in both the opportunity sense and the negative sense. Negative keywords that is. This report will save your client many thousands of dollars of wasted traffic when you see some of the undesirable terms you are showing for. This is also a liability protector. The last thing you want is your client stumbling upon their own ad showing for an unsavory search. (Not to say clients ever search for unsavory things).

4) Budget Utilization – Due to the nature of PPC, there is no precise guarantee that you will spend your exact budget; in fact the guarantee is you won’t. What many don’t realize is that when you make a campaign budget change in Google, it is not a sophisticated system. It was explained to me by our Google rep (Do you like how I passed the buck on this one?) that when you make a budget change the system assumes it was made in the middle of the day, so the system will try to spend 50% of the newly set daily budget. What does that mean? Basically, if you make the change early in the day, you will spend less than you expect to, and if you make the change late in the day you can potentially spend quite a bit more than you expected. While over an extended timeframe it all evens out, if you are trying to make a significant end of month adjustment you could get burned. Moral of the story, watch your budget allocation.

5) Landing Pages – Is Conversion Code Tracking? – Often times we don’t have access to our clients’ web hosting server and more often server protocol is not in place, therefore leaving you vulnerable to getting tracking code overwritten, removed, deleted or your landing page throwing a Page Not Found error. Enter mayhem and dollars lost. Daily, check that your landing pages are up and running and that your conversion code is tracking (and still present on the page). If you don’t, this will hurt your bottom line, your credibility and your Quality Score.

This list is far from exhaustive, and does not address how to manage and improve PPC campaigns, just some of the things that you need to stay on top of.

We provide professional Pay Per Click Management Services, contact us today.

photo credit: fanginhoon