1. Do a physical check of the pages and site structure. This could be done with a database tool or by hand, thus giving you a chance to review the copy of your site, because most likely you haven’t done that in a while.

2. Run a XML sitemap of domain.com to get a list of the URLs present on the site. It is important to use a web-based or desktop application to do this and not rely on an internal tool that generates the sitemap from a CMS database. Why you ask? External sitemap generators (Web-based or desktop) do not have access to the server so they must crawl the site from link to link, just like a search engine. This will give you a better understanding of what content is accessible and what is not.

3. Check your Analytics program. Run a report of all content on the site that has received non-paid Search Engine traffic over a period of time (how long depends on your site traffic levels).

4. Query “site:domain.com” in any Search Engine to get a list of the URLs from that domain that are included in the index. Also, check the www version of the site to see if there is any variance. Theoretically, these numbers should be near identical.

Now that you have this data, what do you do with it?
Now that you have this data, compare them to each other. In Step 1 you identified all the pages/URLs that exist on the site. Now, compare this list to Step 2 – if not all pages that physically exist on the site are present in the sitemap, then you have some investigation to do. This indicates that there may be some issue with the structure of the site that is preventing crawlers from reaching those pages.

Next, compare Step 3 with Step 1.
Are there pages that are present on the page but have never received any traffic from Search Engines? This is an indication that these pages may not be indexed by the Search Engines.

There are pages that you don’t really want traffic to, like your refund policy, or your list of pending lawsuits (note: if you have this on your site take it off). If your product or services page is not receiving traffic this is something that should be addressed.

Finally, compare Step 4 with Step 1.
What pages on the site are not indexed? If you see that a large number of pages are not included in Step 4, you may have an indexation issue. As a method for double-checking this issue, compare the pages missing from Step 4 with Step 3. If there are pages that are not currently in the index, but have gotten Search traffic in the past, these pages may have gotten de-indexed for some reason. Investigate why this might be, especially if you consider them mission-critical pages. Don’t overlook checking your robots.txt file. It is not uncommon to see large sections of a site disallowed, when they shouldn’t be.

How well is your site performing, contact us today to conduct a Technical SEO Site Assessment and start improving or rebuilding your online presence for maximum visibility?

Content Network is a Waste of Time and Money! Really, Are You Sure About That? I hear clients and Internet marketers alike make this statement as often as I hear the question “Why aren’t my ads showing?” but for now let’s discuss some best practices for advertising on the Content Network. It is not unlikely for us at Liberty Interactive Marketing to see content account conversions in the double digits, we recently managed a Gaming and Hospitality account with an average conversion rate of 11.11% on over 1,700 conversions. So we’re not shy in sharing some of our best practices with you.

Five Best Practices to Setting Up and Managing a Content Campaign:

1. Do not run Search- and Content-targeting in the same campaign. This is far and away the most important rule. When you create a campaign in AdWords it defaults to include all 3 networks (Google Search, Search Partners + Google and Content), make sure to separate them. If you are currently making this mistake, stop reading for a moment and turn off Content-targeting immediately.

2. Do not duplicate your Search campaign, run it on Content only, and call it a day. This is a reasonable place to start if you are in violation of #1 above, however, the job is not done. The key thing to remember is that while Search campaigns will give you performance metrics on a keyword basis, Content does not. You only have adgroup visibility, (an adgroup is a logical grouping of related keywords). So you don’t have a way of knowing if one or more of your keywords is making or breaking your adgroup.

3. Campaign construction is crucial to Content-network success. You want to make sure your campaign structure is as focused as possible. This means more adgroups than you would use for a Search campaign. You don’t have the same Quality Score considerations with a Content campaign so duplicates and plurals are acceptable. Also, keep the number of keywords per adgroup small. We have found the most success with 5-10 keywords per adgroup. Every campaign is different, so testing is important.

4. Content targeting algorithm matches content on the page to the keywords in the adgroup so, while “foreclosures real estate phoenix” may make a great keyword in a Search campaign, it is very hard to use in a sentence, so it is unlikely it will match to many content pages. So with that said, long tail keywords are not usually a great idea in a Content campaign. Using this example, you would be better served creating an adgroup with 3 keywords – “foreclosures”,”real estate” and “phoenix”. This combination will give the algorithm many more opportunities to match your ad to desirable content.

5. Google Keyword Tool is still recommended to find your initial keywords but it will just get you started. The Keyword Tool is primarily geared towards Search, so it merely serves as a jumping off point. If you already have a Search campaign running you can use that as a resource too. One methodology involves looking at the top performing keywords in your Search campaign (or promising ones from the Keyword Tool) and then looking at the organic results for each of these terms. Take the top 20-30 results and compare their content. Understand what phrases are commonly used and identify keyword themes. Sound like a lot of work? It is, but it is the difference between a mediocre campaign and a case study. I recommend building a tool to do this for you. We did.

These are some of the best practices to get you pointed in the right direction as you delve into the fascinating world of Content-targeting. But before you go hog-wild reconfiguring and re-launching, remember Content is not appropriate or profitable in all cases. Make sure you have a good understanding of the goals of the campaign or hire us to manage your campaigns.

Read the full unedited version here.

Image credit: Google Display Network

What is the Annotation Feature in Google Analytics?
The annotation feature allows GA users to add notes to a website profiles’ traffic, they can share these with other users of this profile or mark them private. See example below. Notations were made to indicate when internal IP traffic was filtered, when an action to promote the site was performed and when campaigns launched.

What are the benefits of this feature and how can they make a difference for you and your company?
There are many spokes to an organization’s wheel such as PR, marketing, and customer service. In addition, there are the spokes that are not entirely under our control like social media channels. Since there are so many moving parts in an organization it is difficult to keep track of what may be influencing or impacting your daily web traffic.

The annotation feature in GA allows users to tell a story through site statistics. Perhaps major site changes were made, a new campaign was launched or a high profile blogger mentioned your company. These are just a few of the types of items that can be notated in the time-length of your web stats in GA. The possibilities are endless when logging and reviewing quarterly activity within your company – what happened this month, last month, the past 90 days? By allowing all departments to add notes to the site traffic they can provide insight into how their efforts are effecting the overall mission and understand which activities were most successful.

Think of annotations as a shortcut to digging into that spike in traffic or boost in sales. If you can follow traffic on a specific date or length of time when a specific campaign was launched you will be providing yourself and your team with a visual on its performance.

I’ve included a 58 second demo video from Google on their annotation feature below, enjoy and get to posting the notations in your stats regularly for the benefit of your entire team.

Groupon, the popular, online coupon service that launched less than two years ago in Chicago, has become a hit with money conscious consumers. But as it continues to expand to more and more cities including right here in Phoenix, local business owners are discovering the service isn’t without its downsides.

A Local Story

Dana Mule, part owner of Hula’s Modern Tiki at 4700 N. Central Ave., recently participated in a Groupon deal offering $30 of food for $15. The resulting hoard of customers that descended upon Hula’s to take advantage of the 50 percent off deal created havoc for Mule’s restaurant.

“Initially, it was disaster,” said Mule. “Far more people showed than we could accommodate, which made for long wait times … and angry people (which counteracts any benefit you’re supposed to get from this kind of marketing).”

How Groupon Works

The way Groupon works for consumers is relatively simple. Every day, a new local deal is featured on the Groupon homepage, sent to subscribers in a daily email and updated daily on the Groupon iPhone app. If the pre-determined minimum number of people purchases the Groupon within the established time frame, then the deal is active. If the minimum isn’t reached, then the deal is cancelled.

Mule initially decided to take part in Groupon to get additional exposure for his business and to expand his customer base, which are two of the key selling points Groupon uses to attract businesses. But as some experts have pointed out, there can ultimately be a backlash if the discount price ends up taxing a business’s ability to serve its customers, thus eroding their brand.

“The race to the bottom is never the way to get to the top,” said Ellen Malloy in a recent Reuters article regarding the Groupon phenomenon. Malloy promotes high-end restaurants in Chicago and blogs about the topic of discounting for Restaurant Intelligence Agency.

Groupon Threatens Customer Experience

According to Malloy businesses risk a cheapening effect on their brand and that the customer experience can be threatened if an oversubscribed offer ends up producing a short-term spike in demand.

Mule’s own experience with Groupon was uncomfortably akin to Malloy’s cautionary advice.

Groupon provides the business no tools to help manage the number of coupons sold – they up sell you to drive the value of the coupon up (making them more money),” said Mule. “They are not responsive with concerns – the amount of the sell given to the restaurant doesn’t even cover food/liquor cost – and they will not let you put a limit on the total number of Groupons you’d like to sell (we had to beg them to stop it at 1,000).”

After his initial experience with Groupon, Mule said he wouldn’t participate in the service again. He also advised businesses that require appointments, such as salons, to avoid Groupon altogether.

“We’ve talked to other businesses where they had sold so many Groupons that those were to only appointments they could accommodate for months, allowing them to take no additional new clients who would more likely become repeat customers,” he said.

So what do you think?

First off, the major paid search venues use some form of Quality Score or ranking system based on relevancy. Always keep in mind that the search venues get paid based on the click, not the conversion goal. Your profitability is secondary to theirs. As such, always consider – “Is my product/service/company more relevant for my competitors brand than they are?” If you answer “yes” than either you’ve found a utopian business or you are deluding yourself. Since your competitor will almost always be more relevant for their brand name and products, you will find yourself bidding higher just to maintain visibility. You are fighting an uphill battle with this one.

So should you even bother to bid on competitor terms? Yes, if you can commit to it. Strategy becomes crucial in this endeavor. Here are some tips to point you in the right direction:

#1 Make sure all your competitor-related terms are separated from the rest of the terms. Assign a specific budget to these competitor terms. Bear in mind that branded searches of any kind indicate that some preliminary research has been done or a familiarity exists. Because of this you are faced with the challenge of persuading someone who may be quite far down the decision making path to consider a different alternative. In order to convert these customers with a high degree of success, you likely need the perfect storm of: 1) better value 2) lower price 3) stronger call-to-action 4) and a reasonable degree of brand strength. It is not often a prospect will abandon what they are familiar with for an alternative they are not without 1, 2 and 3 being in place.

#2 Focus on what you can control. Often, when aggressively targeting competitors’ terms, you can expect lower Click Through Rates and a higher Cost Per Click than the campaign average. However, this doesn’t mean this traffic can’t or won’t convert. It does mean you need to focus on what you can control. Most prominently, your landing page and user experience. The traffic that is generated by this segment needs to be hit hard and fast with the information needed to ideally make a new buying decision, or at the very least, reset the buying process. Since the latter situation is far more likely, conversion measurement may need to be treated differently.

For instance, in the case of an e-commerce Product A and Product B: A certain percentage of the searchers for Product A will buy Product B if presented with the right value proposition. A larger percentage, which remains largely unknown or unidentified, will take a step back in their buying process and will start to consider Product B alongside Product A.

The first step is to create this audience by establishing credibility and proposing Product B as a worthy alternative to Product A. A word of warning: This cannot be done by disparaging Product A or its source, and it will take more than “Before you buy A, take a look at B.” If you do this, you will decrease your chances of converting these customers and will solidify their buying decision to purchase Product A. Give your potential customers/clients a little more credit.

This is a perfect opportunity to deploy a specifically targeted landing page, with an objective Features Matrix or some other tasteful comparison tool. It is our job as marketers to play to our strengths so definitely highlight what is better about Product B. Testimonials and third-party validation and accolades are appropriate to use here as credibility builders. Don’t be shy, but don’t be over the top either. There is plenty of research surrounding how to appropriately use testimonials, etc. and when to use them.

If you can build enough value in Product B’s strengths, then it is possible to overshadow its shortcomings. Not to point out the obvious, but if Product B has no positive comparisons to Product A, find a new job. In this day and age if you aren’t as good as your competitor, you better be cheaper, and if you aren’t cheaper you are out of business – you just may not know it yet.

While nothing earth-shattering, or new, was uncovered during the hour-long presentation relative to SEO we did take notice of a few observations in relation to how Bing displays several types of content and search engine results.

Let’s begin with the bottom line – Bing organizes and displays their data differently than Google does. Bing’s focus is on making travel and shopping related searches better for the user to make a decision (hence, the decision engine) while Google’s ultimate goal is to deliver the most relevant results for a specific search query no matter what topic. There are new and different opportunities that Bing offers if you are in one of these key industries (shopping and travel). While Bing will be able to gain in these areas we don’t believe SEO strategies should change dramatically. Following best practices, building a crawlable site and creating great content are still the keys to success with all search engines.

Here are some of the items that make Bing different from Google:

1) Bing’s “Best Match” or top result is manually chosen by an actual human, not algorithmically as is Google’s. Not every search will have a “best match” because of this manual selection. This human moderation (similar to DMOZ and Wikipedia) confirms the importance and relevancy of quality site content and as we all know, content remains king in all search engines. It also means that Bing may be a bit harder to game for a top ranking for anything other than a branded search. That is unless you truly are the most relevant, useful site for the target query.

2) Bing will show results from “their” web properties and third parties with which Bing has agreements such as MSNBC, Hulu, MSN, and others before anyone else’s. With Yahoo! becoming more of a media entity, this plays right into Bing’s apparent strategy. We are seeing how Microsoft is positioning this search engine to leverage their other properties as news and content sources. This could and most likely will have a huge impact on search relevancy, since the most relevant result won’t always be shown.

3) Bing’s image search likes absolute URLs as opposed to relative ones. (Absolute URLs are when the domain is in the URL like www.libertyinteractivemarketing.com/directory versus simply pointing to /directory) The application of this is that if an image is linked from another site, the original site will still get the visibility in image search. So don’t steal images, but if you do, make sure to host them on your own server.

4) Local ads on Bing are supplied by YellowPages.com. So, if you want your business’ text ad to appear on Bing local search you’ll need to advertise with YellowPages.com.

5) Bing Shopping is CPA-based (cost per action) and sorts results based on a combination of price, shipping and Bing’s cashback program. An important note: You can’t participate in Bing Shopping unless you are already an advertiser on Bing/MSNAdcenter.

A key element regarding personal privacy is that Bing indexes the Facebook profile pictures and photo albums of fans of pages (business profiles) and shows them in its image search with little regard for relevancy. So, for example, if you search your company name on Bing, it may pull in pictures of people who fanned your page – and not necessarily pictures that are representative of the brand or that either party wants shown to the world. We find this extremely scary. If you do too, read this related article on Facebook pages now included in Google’s real-time results.

Have you noticed other differences between Bing and Google? We would love to hear how people are using Bing and other observations about the new “decision engine.”

We took a closer look by searching our own company name “liberty interactive marketing” in Bing’s images tab and found that profile pictures of our Facebook fans came up for our very own company name.

The key point to highlight here is that there is no such thing as privacy. There is only perceived privacy. There are loopholes. Kind of like when you join an association, purchase membership, or opt-in to any program – many companies use that “relationship” as a legitimate reason to contact you or loan out your informaiton. In this case, the relationship of you fanning a company page may be permission by proxy to Facebook then to Bing (given their new relationship with Facebook) to pull in any data they want….this includes your mug or at some point status updates.

While both Google and Bing are figuring out real-time search and what data makes sense to display as a result (primarily trending for now), Facebook is slowly opening up the gates of information and in my opinion, in all the wrong ways.

Facebook is taking the fun out of Facebook. I would really like to be wrong in this prediction, but this direction seems to be headed down the wrong road. Why?

Because of the unknown. Google plans on more than 550 updates to their algorithm in the coming year (they made over 450 in 2007), their search engine algorithm is smart, really smart. There is no telling how the engineers will figure out how to use this data and it may be at your expense.

Privacy is gone. Bing has proven that with its image display.

If this gets your blood boiling, read these articles for more search engine marketing dish:
Facebook Pages Now Part of Google’s Real-Time Results
How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web

While Toyota is scrambling to figure out a solution to the “accelerator pedal” crisis, GM is utilizing the Social Media accelerator. By monitoring their competition and listening to their customers, they were able to act quickly and possibly lure customers away from Toyota. Based on Toyota’s reliable and trustworthy reputation, Jake Fisher, senior automotive engineer at Consumer Reports, said “It’s very difficult to pry someone away from Toyota.” Which is why the competition must be paying attention to how they can now find a way to gain some of Toyota’s market share.

Less than 24 hours after the recall was announced GM announced an incentive program to any Toyota owner:

• Toyota lease holders can get up to $1,000 in lease payments to terminate their Toyota lease and buy or lease a GM vehicle. It applies to Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC vehicles.
• Financing buyers can get zero percent interest rates for 60 months on most GM vehicles.
• Cash buyers can get $1,000 down-payment assistance to get into a GM vehicle.

Social Media Lessons Learned…so far:

• Monitor your competition, you never know when an opportunity may present itself.
• Listen to your customer – on and offline.
• Fail fast, act quickly.

In a recent conversation with a colleague we were discussing whether a company should tackle on-site SEO on their own or hire a firm. Needless to say which side I took. This led to a conversation in home improvement that directly relates to outsourcing SEO vs doing it yourself.

Our conversation concluded on this note:
Companies like Home Depot have built their business on telling people they can make their own home improvements while Contractors have built their business on fixing what home improvements people do themselves.

Enter DIY Search Engine Optimization vs. Hiring an Search Engine Optimization Firm
The Home Depot and Contractor scenario is nearly the perfect analogy to describing whether a company should take on SEO in-house or outsource it.

If you are a DIY-er you probably know the list of things that you need to have done and you may even know how to implement some of them. Let’s take for instance installing a door – seems simple enough – measure the opening, buy the door, install the door. For most DIY-ers they even know the inventory of tools. Where it starts to get fuzzy is using the tools correctly and installing the door correctly (i.e. is it level, is it plumb, etc). If this is your first, second or even your third time installing a door it still doesn’t compare to a practitioner who has installed hundreds even thousands of doors. They can install it correctly and in a fraction of the time.

This is the same for SEO – you may know what to do but you may not know how to do it. Or better yet, do it the right way. It is one thing if you want to have something done, it is another to want to have something done right. For on-site SEO it is a lot more than just keywords, titles, metadata or the URL structure. It is not just about doing simple keyword research and a simple competitive analysis to arrive at your chosen terms.

In most cases, it’s what the DIY-er doesn’t know that hurts them. It’s the simple tricks, the new tools, the history and experience of having done it over and over again as well as how things have changed over time that affect success (the history of SEO).

Most importantly, it is all of the other factors that DIY-ers don’t even consider that can have a greater impact on search engine visibility.

A few months ago we received a phone call from someone who said they have been doing SEO for 6-months and felt they did a pretty good job on all the titles and metadata for their client’s new site and were wondering why they had zero leads coming in since this site was built “search engine friendly” and had “keywords”. The prior site was receiving 5-6 leads per week.

One of the factors they dismissed was the domain name. They failed to realize that the new domain they were switching the site to was brand new and had little to no visibility within search engines. They didn’t even consider this as a factor and launched a personal site on the old domain with over 11 years of authority and credibility within the search engines – basically wiping out all of their relevancy for their business. So now they had two new sites and are having to start all over.

Imagine the investment over that 11 years. And now? All gone and they must start all over in what is now an even more competitive arena than online was 10 years ago.

What your company should consider before deciding on whether to outsource Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or attempt it in-house:

• While SEO can be viewed as a mechanical process with steps and checklists, so can the process of building a house. Given the rules and codes and engineering principles needed to build a house, would you rather take the risk of figuring it out for yourself, or would it be more wise to hire a professional.
• There is also an intangible side to SEO, while you may know exactly how much you SAVED by doing it yourself, you will never know how much it COSTED you in terms of lost revenue or visibility.

Consider this when looking to do on-site SEO in-house, do you really know what you are doing? Is it worth the risk? What is it that you don’t know that may hurt you or even worse may cause it to all be thrown away?

photo credit: DIY Life

The leaders of the pack with robust and highly-integrated solutions were ExactTarget and Responsys. Liberty Interactive Marketing has been a long-time user and advocate for ExactTarget given a customers complex needs with regard to segmentation, dynamic content, and integrating with other marketing channels like social and mobile.

While clearly the 70+ points of criteria knocked out a lot of smaller solutions like Campaign Monitor and Blue Sky Factory, it doesn’t mean medium-sized businesses should discount these. Before selecting an appropriate email service provider, sit down and determine what your needs are, from customer database integration to segmentation. What assets are you working with and what shape are they in?

And if you thought email was a passe marketing tactic for 2010 and beyond, you’ll be surprised to know that 68% of those surveyed by Forrester said that they anticipate that email marketing’s effectiveness will increase in the next three years.

The main focus for marketers will be to understand who their customers are and how to market to them personally and with relevance.

To stay ahead of the pack or just catch up I highly recommend downloading this email marketing report from Forrester compliments of ExactTarget.