townsend.bunksite.com

Blog

  • 5 for Friday — Links, Stories, & Posts for Your Weekend

    1.
    How to Seduce Your Readers & Woo – Bait – Links

    Link bait has to accomplish a lot, and without the help of bright buttons and testimonials that help landing pages along. If you don’t nail your presentation, you aren’t going to get the results you want and all your effort will be wasted. Develop some strategies that will help you grab attention and hold your readers’ interest.

    2.
    6 Ways to Boost Your Rankings Using Google Authorship

    Google authorship is a hotbutton topic in the SEO world currently — which makes sense, considering how Google wants to merge this with search results in the future. Here are some tips to help you use this tool to create a personal brand while building personal and professional relationships.

    3.
    35 Beautiful Landing Page Design Examples to Drool Over

    What do you need to do to create an effective landing page? Upping your conversion rate is more difficult than ticking off a simple check list of requirements. Here’s a long list of pages that worked and some thoughts on why they worked. While copying a perfect example is no help to anyone, this list is sure to give you some new ideas.

    4.
    Should Potential Employers be Allowed to Ask an Interviewee for Their Facebook Password?

    Have you ever been asked for your Facebook password on a job interview? According to an Associated Press report, more and more companies are requiring job seekers to hand over their account details before they can be hired. If you’re starting a job hunt, you might want to think twice about what you’re posting and what it says about you.

    5.
    Changes Every SEO Should Make BEFORE the Over-Optimization Penalty Hits

    It was recently announced that Google will begin penalizing websites that use “over-optimization” techniques. The gang at SEOMoz is taking a trip to the whiteboard to show you what changes you should be making to avoid consequences from the looming crackdown. Learn about which practices are likely to be targeted and stay out of trouble before the law cracks down.

  • Will Scott at the Search Insider Summit Writeup

    Our hardworking CEO Will Scott got a shoutout in the writeup of the Mediapost Search Insider Summit today! Click here to see what Mediapost had to say about the event and a recap of Will’s comments on retargeting cookies and social content.

  • When Keeping It Relevant Goes Wrong

    Brenda Johnson Knows What's Up

    I’ve been actively creating and managing Google AdWords campaigns for over five years. In that time, I’ve made a lot of mistakes with everything from keyword selection to match type to ad content. It happens — if no one ever made a mistake on AdWords, we would all be PPC success stories, and that’s certainly not the case. So when I typically see mistakes with sponsored ads, I take a screenshot, write a short heads-up email to the advertiser explaining their mistake, and keep it rollin’. However, over the weekend I came across what could possibly be the worst targeting and most confusing landing page I’ve ever seen on AdWords.

    While I was searching for “delaware county oh plastic surgery” (before you start reading too much into this, no, I was not looking for a plastic surgeon. I am quite comfortable with my stout lil’ man-child body), I came across this gem of an ad…

    Find the Bad Ad

    (more…)

  • Will Scott at Search Starts Here 2012 Local Search Association Conference — Recap

    SI CEO Will Scott recently led a discussion panel at Search Starts Here, the 2012 Local Search Association Conference. This stellar writeup goes over some of his main points and provides a handy bulleted list of key takeaways at the end. You can also check out another writeup on Local Search Insider by clicking right here!

  • Google Adwords Certification: The Breakdown

    Getting Google Adwords Certified can be an invaluable update to your resume. Why? With this professional SEO accreditation, you’re making sure you’re doing everything you can to increase your worth to your clients or company.

    Whether you are planning to start a paid search campaign for your business or if you’re just trying to understand what your PPC manager is always talking about, Adwords certification is an extremely beneficial feather in your cap. However, don’t think you can just roll out of bed, think “I’ll get certified today!” and pass the test with ease.

    To officially become Google Adwords Certified, you must pass both the Advertising Fundamentals exam and one advanced-level exam. Everyone on the account management team here at Search Influence has decided to take on the challenge to get individually certified.  Luckily we have two Google Adwords gurus, Anthony Coleman and Doug Thomas, to answer our never-ending questions while studying.

    To make studying easier, Google has set up a Google AdWords Certification Program Learning Center, where you can find “lesson plans” for each Google Adword exam. Reading all the chapters (from start to finish) for each exam may be a bit time-consuming, but very worth it. I highly recommend the interactive e-learning lessons that are scattered throughout the chapters. Most e-learning lessons have quizzes to test your knowledge before taking the actual exam.

    The first test is 113 questions with 1 hour and 30 minutes to complete the exam. You must get an 85% on the first test, which cost $50, and you must pass the first exam before moving on to the advanced.  After passing the exams, you are certified for two years.  Don’t worry if you don’t pass the exam the first time: you can always retake it. However, you must pay the $50 fee each time.

    VS

    You can become a qualified individual or a qualified company within the Google Professional Certification program. To qualify for an Individual Certification, you must pass both the Fundamentals exam and one of the three advanced exams.  Also, you must accept the program Terms and Conditions (which happens automatically by enrolling in the program).  Also, there is no minimum spend requirement to be Individually Qualified.

    Doug and Anthony have already qualified Search Influence for a Company Certification. To qualify for a Company Certification, a company must have managed at least a $10,000 spend over 90 days, starting the day the AdWords account is linked to the My Client Center. The company must have at least one individually qualified employee and accept the program Terms and Conditions.

    The Google Partner Search tool helps potential advertisers find a Certified AdWords Professional. People enter their estimated budget, along with the type of help they need, then Google compiles a list of certified professionals. Certified Partners receive a badge showing their qualification, while those who are Individually Qualified receive a certificate when they pass the necessary exams.

    Tips for Taking the Exam
    • Study. This is easy to put off, but during the exam you’ll be asked a question that you would only know if you read the exam learning materials. Luckily, the study materials are broken out according to which exams they’re covered on.

    • Take the exam in a quiet area with no distractions. Get out of the house with no family, pets or TV shows to divert your focus from the exam.

    • You cannot access any other part of your computer until you have completed the exam. Make sure you save and close everything you have open on your computer because once you start the test, it blocks you out of everything and you can’t pause the timer on the exam.

    • One beneficial feature about the exam is that you can mark questions for review and come back to them later. I loved this because if I didn’t know the answer to a question, I marked it for review and moved on to the next.

    Google is a tricky minx. I noticed when taking the first exam that some questions have multiple right answers, but Google wants you to choose the best right answer. Watch out for those questions and always go with your gut feeling.
    You can sign up here to take the exam. Good luck!

  • Trading Privacy for Employability: Job Candidates Increasingly Asked to Provide Facebook Logins

    In the fall of 2003, Mark Zuckerberg and a few friends created a simple social website to connect better with friends and classmates at Harvard University.  Little did he know that this social website would become the lodestar of today’s social networking — not just allowing for connections with school friends and classmates, but outside friends, families, and people across the world.  The term “friend me” or “Facebook me” is soon to be defined in Merriam Webster’s Dictionary:

    job candidates facebook

    – friend me (f’rend mē): “to give someone access to your profile, wall posts,  information, and photos… including  those pictures taken of you drunk last weekend.”

    But how many friends should we have? How many people should we allow to view our profile? Recently, businesses across America are requiring more and more job candidates to provide their Facebook username and password during interviews for employment.  These corporate executives  want to do more than a little digging into these candidate’s personal lives before saying “you’re hired.” You know — just to make sure they don’t belong to a cult, or certain fraternity, or social group, or political party, or gang.  Totally legal right?  But why stop here?  In addition to providing Facebook logins, should these candidates just hand over the keys to their home and give these companies copies of their bank statements and complete medical histories?

    Whatever happened to references from previous jobs?  When a job candidate gives a potential employer a list of references, does it give them the liberty to call and ask all the personal and professional questions needed?  Yes, of course. But who needs potentially inaccurate or hard-to-get-a-hold-of references when we have the vast slew of information available in Facebook… right?

    According to an August 2011 study by The Atlantic , 45% of employers use social networking sites to screen potential employees, with 29% using Facebook specifically and 26% using Linkedin.  Funny how the statistics are higher for a social site rather than a professional site.

    Many employers argue that people interact more on social networks rather than in real life, and viewing their profile will give them a better idea of what kind of person the applicant is outside the interview.  Although this statement may be true, Facebook officials are encouraging job candidates to hold their ground and withhold all private information from potential employers. Even The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has spoken out saying “People are entitled to their private lives.”

    In an economy where getting a job is challenging enough, should we just allow businesses to have access to all aspects of our lives, even the ones that aren’t business related?  Or should employers be happy reviewing our resumes, our talents, attributes, and our contributions to their company, and leaving this privacy violation out of it?

  • Mediabistro & Twitter Marketing — SI Shoutout

    Our CEO Will Scott gets a quick shoutout in a Mediabistro article on Twitter article marketingCheck it out!

  • 5 Most Memorable Marketing Fails

    marketing failsOver the years, I’ve seen many companies going into damage control for missteps that they took in pushing their message. To learn from the mistakes of others, I’ve compiled a few of the most memorable marketing fails. These companies tried to do something unique or different to increase their brand awareness or create social interaction — but sometimes, things do not go as plan. Below is a list of the top marketing backfires that some of the biggest corporations have faced, offending or even repelling their customers.

    1. New Orleans hosted the NCAA Men’s Final Four the weekend of March 30, 2012. Coca-Cola, one of the NCAA Final Four sponsors, sprayed painted their logo using a chalk spray throughout the French Quarter. Residents were angered by the graffiti in their neighborhood, and Twitter blew up with tweets to Coca-Cola about the guerilla marketing that defaced their neighborhood. You can see their response and their graffiti below:

    Response_CocaCola

    graffiti

    2. McDonald’s started a hashtag twitter campaign #McDStories to connect with their customers about their new healthy food initiative back in January. Instead of getting positive stories, they received negative backlash. People replied with health issues from eating at McDonald’s, criticism of the business model and disgusting things they had found in their food.

    mcdstories

    3. In March 2011, GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons posted a video on his blog of him shooting an elephant in Zimbabwe. PETA and several others were upset by this video and shortly after, PETA cancelled their contract with GoDaddy.

    4. Groupon’s offensive ad during the 2011 Super Bowl showed poor taste in making a parody of the problems that the Tibetan people face. This controversial ad caused Groupon to go into damage control mode. This ad was no laughing matter when Twitter users lashed back with hard facts on the deaths caused by the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

    5. While the 2010 BP oil spill devastated the Gulf of Mexico, Spirit Airlines turned the matter into a mockery. No stranger to controversial ads, they launched several ads that said “Check Out The Oil On Our Beaches”. The tasteless campaign did not sit well with Gulf Coast residents whose coastline and wildlife were devastated by the spill.

    When companies think they are on the verge of some creative marketing breakthrough, they’re often failing to see the big picture or contextualize their campaign from the targets’ viewpoint. It’s a miracle some of these even made it past the cutting room. As tempting as it may be to commit our own marketing fail, it’s never funny to just poke fun at someone’s plight: we can all learn from these blunders. What do you think these companies should have done differently, or was their damage control appropriate? Any gaffes of your own to share?

  • Tips and Tricks to Become a Ferocious Facebook Fireball

    The end of February brought another successful and informative Search Marketing Expo West, where yours truly triumphantly (and successfully, if I may brag) returned to present on another mobile panel.  The presentation was so nice, I was named twice. Enough about that, as this post isn’t about me (sad, right?). If you want to read a bit about it, check out this blog from Erica Sendros and our best buds at aimClear. We also had a newb in our midst, with Joseph Henson making his SMX debut. This isn’t about him either, but Kathy Long and our other favorite friends at Bruce Clay Inc. wrote this cool post about it.

    “So if this isn’t about you, what the hell are you on about?” you might ask. Well, you won’t be taking that tone once you walk (click) away from this blog with some awesome Facebook tips and tricks, thanks to me and only me. Actually, you can thank our feminine friend Tami Dalley (Geez, how many friends do we have? Most importantly, how many times can I alliterate when mentioning mates?) from Buddy Media, for presenting this amazing information at SMX. If you apply this not-so-inside information to your business’s Facebook page, your posts will receive greater likes and comments and you’ll be a ferocious foe (last time, I promise) to your competitors.

    The most important thing is to keep it brief. Posts that clocked in at under 80 characters had a 30% higher rate of engagement than those with more. This rule is especially true for photos and videos. Photos should stick to the <80 character rule, while video descriptions should have less than 40. As we say at Search Influence, “Hemingway sentences, not Faulkner.” Another way to put it is, “Brevity is your Bosom Buddy” (I can quit when I want!).

    If you only post once or twice a week, be sure to do so on Thursdays and Fridays. On average, fans are 18% more likely to engage on these days than others. Surprisingly, Thursday receives the most, with Friday right behind it. This is not a hard and fast rule, though. You should monitor your own fan engagement and do what works best for you.

    When considering what type of content to post, photos are the way to go. They easily receive the most likes and comments, with plain status updates and videos trailing behind.  Links and events have the worst rate of interaction. They can have the tendency to peeve your pals (nailed it), so use these sparingly.

    Include clear calls to action in your posts, but the language used is important.  Words such as “like,” “post,” and “take” are much more likely to receive engagement than “order,” “see,” and “become a fan.” Likewise, ask for the sell, but do it softly. “Event,” “winner,” and “offer” are better received than “save,” “free shipping,” and “sale.”

    Lastly, posts that ask questions are a great way to spur comments and interaction on your page. When asking, place the question at the end of your post as opposed to the beginning.  Posts framed in this manner are 15% more likely to be answered. The theory is that if you ask at the start, you’ve lost their interest by the time they get to the end. Fans can be a lazy lot (maybe I have a problem). As with the above, the way in which they’re asked matters. Use words such as “where,” “when,” “would,” and “should” and avoid using “why,” “did,” “what,” and “who.” Fill-in-the-blank posts are fan fodder, with a comment rate nine times higher than the average.

    The study has even more information than what is provided in this post, and I’m going to make you work for the rest, which can be viewed on the Buddy Media site. You can’t have everything handed to you, my cordial comrades.

    For those of keeping count, that was nine.

  • Will Scott & BtoB on Local Search

    Search Influence CEO Will Scott has a chat with our friends at BtoB featured today, covering a variety of local search topics. Check it out right here!