One of the concerning trends I see in PPC management is, companies are spending on PPC ads based upon the core keywords of their business.
This is a point of debate in PPC management.
Good use of PPC advertising means you should not have to spend money bidding on keywords for your core products and services. Yes, I know that's theory. And yes, so many companies throw money at their problems in the form of PPC advertising. Their problems being relatively poor SEO value for their websites. Your natural SEO value of your website should already be giving you visibility in that regard.
Granted, many industries are very competitive, and your SEO value alone may not give you enough visibility at the moment. So what do companies do? They bid on keywords they really shouldn't have to. And that's precisely why so many companies find it expensive to compete for PPC bidding.
No wonder why so many companies claim they are not hitting their ROIs. It is also the reason why I believe Google has a great deal of customer turnover, despite their success.
The better approach may be to invest that capital into SEO, viral content, marketing/seasonal promotions, and social media for your website. This is not an overnight endeavor. It will take months of consistent labor. But the payoff is substantial and long-lasting.
49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:
ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0
For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com
Thursday, August 27, 2009
"Do I need PPC Advertising for my Business?"
I got that question today from one prospective client.
I recommend you do because
1) Search engine algorithms can change. So if you are enjoying high organic visibility now, your PPC advertising will buffer your drop in visibility if that happens.
2) PPC ad spending reinforces to the search engines what keywords are most important to your business, even if your website SEO value is poor. Search engines like Google ultimately want to make their ad-spending customers happy.
PPC advertising can extend your company brand, and go beyond the marketing reach of your core products and services. For example, let's say your company sells dog shampoo. Bidding on related dog activity keywords might pay off. For example, you may want to bid on "dog hair brush" or "dog grooming tips."
These are keywords that are not exactly related to dog shampoo. But someone may be interested in buying your dog shampoo product. PPC advertising allows you to go after this traffic.
49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:
ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0
For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com
I recommend you do because
1) Search engine algorithms can change. So if you are enjoying high organic visibility now, your PPC advertising will buffer your drop in visibility if that happens.
2) PPC ad spending reinforces to the search engines what keywords are most important to your business, even if your website SEO value is poor. Search engines like Google ultimately want to make their ad-spending customers happy.
PPC advertising can extend your company brand, and go beyond the marketing reach of your core products and services. For example, let's say your company sells dog shampoo. Bidding on related dog activity keywords might pay off. For example, you may want to bid on "dog hair brush" or "dog grooming tips."
These are keywords that are not exactly related to dog shampoo. But someone may be interested in buying your dog shampoo product. PPC advertising allows you to go after this traffic.
49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:
ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0
For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Save $49.49 off your First Month!
Now, through the end of the year, you can save $49.49 off your First Monthly Due. Find the Google Local Ads Coupon here, and just follow the instructions.
49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:
ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0
For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com
49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:
ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0
For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Invest or Borrow Capital. Peer to Peer Lending with Lendingclub.com
Want to borrow up to $25K at rates much less than credit cards?Or...
Want to earn 7-9% APY or more on your money as an investor?
Check out lendingclub.com and please use my referral code when registering:
club_lender
By putting in the above referral code, you earn a Free $25 as an investor. You don't get a bonus as an approved borrower with the referral code (lendingclub needs to work on that). But if you sign up properly using the referral code, and post a comment on my blog, I may invest $25 in your loan request. I can't guarantee that I will invest because you might look like a risky borrower :p.
Ever since prosper.com shut down, I've been having difficulty earning good returns on my money. As of the time of this writing, most major Internet money market accounts like emigrantdirect.com, ingdirect.com, and amtrustdirect.com pay less than 2% APY. Stocks are a nightmare, and government debt (treasuries, I-bonds) are a joke.
But the latest and most stable competitor to prosper.com seems to be lendingclub.com.
It's nice to see their CEO, Renaud Leplanche get a plug in this month's Businessweek.
The owner of this blog assumes no risk of loss in investing by referring lendingclub.com. All trademarks are owned by their respective companies and have no associations with 49er-consulting.com or the owner of this blog.
49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:
ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0
For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com
Yes, we are in Montclair NJ, and Yes, we do business nationwide!
Where else would I rather work as an SEM professional? Montclair, NJ is situated very well because of their bus AND train station service into NYC. On a day with low traffic, I can commute into NYC by car or train in about 30 minutes. Montclair is known for many things, from their upscale and various restaurants, to their beautiful homes and schools, including Montclair State University.At the moment, we are based on Park Street, and Christopher Street, Montclair NJ 07042 for all your ppc management and seo consulting needs. We're a small business ourselves, so we are transitioning to the right-sized commercial space at the moment.
That's all for today!
49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:
ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0
For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com
Monday, August 24, 2009
Today's PPC Management Tip
PPC ADVERTISING MANAGEMENT TIP #34
Spending a lot of time on your PPC bid management platform won't fix things.
It's tempting for professional ppc managers to spend too much time on their ppc accounts where you are inundated with the granular details and metrics. Throw in text ad management, A/B testing, and other controls, and it's easy to see how your time flies.
From an agency perspective, we speak with many new clients who expect us to go into their ppc accounts
and somehow fix things. "Fixing things" don't begin or end spending alot of time there. Furthermore, if your
business model, website, company culture, or marketing plan has issues, that will in fact complicate arriving
at improving your metrics.
If your conversion rates or other metrics aren't hitting your targets, you need to be spending time improving
the following (but not limited to):
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:
ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0
For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com
Spending a lot of time on your PPC bid management platform won't fix things.
It's tempting for professional ppc managers to spend too much time on their ppc accounts where you are inundated with the granular details and metrics. Throw in text ad management, A/B testing, and other controls, and it's easy to see how your time flies.
From an agency perspective, we speak with many new clients who expect us to go into their ppc accounts
and somehow fix things. "Fixing things" don't begin or end spending alot of time there. Furthermore, if your
business model, website, company culture, or marketing plan has issues, that will in fact complicate arriving
at improving your metrics.
If your conversion rates or other metrics aren't hitting your targets, you need to be spending time improving
the following (but not limited to):
- Business model (limitations of pricing, value, delivery, fulfillment, etc.)
- Website (SEO, content, usability, flow, convention, etc.)
- Company culture (many times, the client's IT department don't cooperate, or isn't as agile as their marketing department needs them to be)
- Marketing plan (is another marketing channel lacking or not pulling it's weight? it may be indirectly dragging down your metrics)
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:
ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0
For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com
Saturday, August 22, 2009
More Companies Blocking Social Networking Sites
Scansafe, a web security solutions provider, reports a trend among its business clients: That more of them are deciding to block social networking websites.
If you examine this report, productivity is sited numerous times as the main reason to block employee access to sites.
Some other reasons Scansafe reports for this finding is that many social networking sites have malware, and pornography associated with them.
According to Scansafe, these are categories their customers are choosing to block:
76% social networking
75% weapons
64% alcohol
58% webmail
52% online shopping
51% sports
47% online banking
This only affirms what I've know for a long time in Internet marketing. As a business, you really do have to be very careful about using social networking properties to promote your business. You have to choose your social networking applications carefully. You can't take the quantity approach of trying them all and seeing what sticks. Your business brand is too valuable.
If it's true that major companies are sensing that frequenting social networking sites lead to unproductive behavior, and it's also true that social networks like twitter are still struggling to monetize their business models, then it's my opinion we should slow down on our mad rush onto the bandwagon of social networking for commercial purposes.
When choosing to use social networking applications to promote your business, try using the services of experienced agency help, like 49er-consulting.com. 49er-consulting has pricing just for small businesses are very experienced in the right social networking tools for you.
Consider hiring an experienced PPC management agency that caters to small businesses, works on low fees, and is well-versed on a wide array of Internet marketing tactics. 49er-consulting.com is one such agency based in NJ, but does business nationwide.
49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and rapidly growing companies.
It's services include but are not limited to:
If you examine this report, productivity is sited numerous times as the main reason to block employee access to sites.
Some other reasons Scansafe reports for this finding is that many social networking sites have malware, and pornography associated with them.
According to Scansafe, these are categories their customers are choosing to block:
76% social networking
75% weapons
64% alcohol
58% webmail
52% online shopping
51% sports
47% online banking
This only affirms what I've know for a long time in Internet marketing. As a business, you really do have to be very careful about using social networking properties to promote your business. You have to choose your social networking applications carefully. You can't take the quantity approach of trying them all and seeing what sticks. Your business brand is too valuable.
If it's true that major companies are sensing that frequenting social networking sites lead to unproductive behavior, and it's also true that social networks like twitter are still struggling to monetize their business models, then it's my opinion we should slow down on our mad rush onto the bandwagon of social networking for commercial purposes.
When choosing to use social networking applications to promote your business, try using the services of experienced agency help, like 49er-consulting.com. 49er-consulting has pricing just for small businesses are very experienced in the right social networking tools for you.
Consider hiring an experienced PPC management agency that caters to small businesses, works on low fees, and is well-versed on a wide array of Internet marketing tactics. 49er-consulting.com is one such agency based in NJ, but does business nationwide.
49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and rapidly growing companies.
It's services include but are not limited to:
- ppc management / pay per click management
- email marketing / email list management
- seo consulting
- search engine marketing
- internet advertising
- banner advertising
- multi-channel marketing
- blog marketing web 2.0
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
The Truth about PPC Advertising
...Is that it may be a losing proposition(!).
Kind of ironic coming from a PPC consultant like myself?
Consider the following:
1) Your competition grows in quantity and quality. This makes your eventual PPC costs ultimately more and more expensive.
2) Your competition uses tools to figure out what your bid is. They also use software to consistently outbid you 24/7. The only winners in PPC bidding may be the search engines and your power-mad competition (who is 99% very likely not hitting their ROIs).
3) Where does click fraud come from? That's a broad question for another day. But some of your black hat competitors employ nefarious bots and spider software to click on your ads and backspace out of your landing pages. This costs you money and reduces your SEO value according to search engine algorithms. There are entities out there purposefully designed to waste your ad spend and lower your ad visibility.
4) Your top competitors may never be beaten because of the age and sheer size/activity of their internet properties. Plus, I believe advertising tenure goes into search engine algorithms. Advertising tenure is the length of time, and total money spent on PPC advertising. How can you say search engines don't assign a figurative and quantitative value to this? PPC advertising is not to be viewed as a game where there must be a way to win.
5) The search engines aren't in the business of revealing to you the cheapest bid required for your desired rank. They are in the business of charging your credit card each month for as much as possible. Your ad spending is opaque and most likely inflated.
6) The search engines are not interested in saving you money from ubiquitous click fraud. Even more waste, as reported by the NY Times. Again, your ad spending is opaque and most likely inflated.
7) Even if you have the best internet property, and want to pay top dollar, search engines will never guarantee top ranking. Think about this: How many online book selling companies are there in the United States? Thousands? How many of them are willing to pay and do pay top dollar for at least first page ranking? Hundreds? If there are only 11 PPC ad rank spots on the first page of a query, how does a search engine cater to them all? The larger question is, how do you know search engines aren't just taking your money and serving your ads poorly? Ad serving itself is not transparent. At the end of the day, search engines charge you an unitemized, unqualified total, and you are expected to pay.
Conclusion? PPC management should not be run by the typical inexperienced business owner. PPC management, almost like accounting, is a ruthless affair if you want to handle it profitably. You have to know where to cut your losses, and know what areas on your internet properties you need to work on.
The best PPC management help you can find has expertise in other wide areas of Internet marketing. PPC advertising is not something that exists on an island. Other Internet marketing disciplines effect your ad spending efficiencies.
Consider hiring an experienced PPC management agency that caters to small businesses, works on low fees, and is well-versed on a wide array of Internet marketing tactics. 49er-consulting.com is one such agency based in NJ, but does business nationwide.
49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and rapidly growing companies.
It's services include but are not limited to:
Kind of ironic coming from a PPC consultant like myself?
Consider the following:
1) Your competition grows in quantity and quality. This makes your eventual PPC costs ultimately more and more expensive.
2) Your competition uses tools to figure out what your bid is. They also use software to consistently outbid you 24/7. The only winners in PPC bidding may be the search engines and your power-mad competition (who is 99% very likely not hitting their ROIs).
3) Where does click fraud come from? That's a broad question for another day. But some of your black hat competitors employ nefarious bots and spider software to click on your ads and backspace out of your landing pages. This costs you money and reduces your SEO value according to search engine algorithms. There are entities out there purposefully designed to waste your ad spend and lower your ad visibility.
4) Your top competitors may never be beaten because of the age and sheer size/activity of their internet properties. Plus, I believe advertising tenure goes into search engine algorithms. Advertising tenure is the length of time, and total money spent on PPC advertising. How can you say search engines don't assign a figurative and quantitative value to this? PPC advertising is not to be viewed as a game where there must be a way to win.
5) The search engines aren't in the business of revealing to you the cheapest bid required for your desired rank. They are in the business of charging your credit card each month for as much as possible. Your ad spending is opaque and most likely inflated.
6) The search engines are not interested in saving you money from ubiquitous click fraud. Even more waste, as reported by the NY Times. Again, your ad spending is opaque and most likely inflated.
7) Even if you have the best internet property, and want to pay top dollar, search engines will never guarantee top ranking. Think about this: How many online book selling companies are there in the United States? Thousands? How many of them are willing to pay and do pay top dollar for at least first page ranking? Hundreds? If there are only 11 PPC ad rank spots on the first page of a query, how does a search engine cater to them all? The larger question is, how do you know search engines aren't just taking your money and serving your ads poorly? Ad serving itself is not transparent. At the end of the day, search engines charge you an unitemized, unqualified total, and you are expected to pay.
Conclusion? PPC management should not be run by the typical inexperienced business owner. PPC management, almost like accounting, is a ruthless affair if you want to handle it profitably. You have to know where to cut your losses, and know what areas on your internet properties you need to work on.
The best PPC management help you can find has expertise in other wide areas of Internet marketing. PPC advertising is not something that exists on an island. Other Internet marketing disciplines effect your ad spending efficiencies.
Consider hiring an experienced PPC management agency that caters to small businesses, works on low fees, and is well-versed on a wide array of Internet marketing tactics. 49er-consulting.com is one such agency based in NJ, but does business nationwide.
49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and rapidly growing companies.
It's services include but are not limited to:
- ppc management / pay per click management
- email marketing / email list management
- seo consulting
- search engine marketing
- internet advertising
- banner advertising
- multi-channel marketing
- blog marketing web 2.0
Monday, August 10, 2009
First Entry
Welcome to my blog on ppc management, seo consulting, and small business tips. I'm a senior search engine marketing professional of 11+ years, and take a professional and refreshingly conservative approach to Internet marketing- something my constituents welcome!
In my blog, I discuss all things Internet marketing from the perspective of small businesses. I also include book reviews, and reflect on relevant news.
More to come!
In my blog, I discuss all things Internet marketing from the perspective of small businesses. I also include book reviews, and reflect on relevant news.
More to come!
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