Alan Rabinowitz

Top 10 Strategies to Increase PPC Conversions
by Alan Rabinowitz

PPC is as much about maintenance and development as it is about establishment. So if you think that simply putting up a good PPC campaign will ensure you the top slot for years to come, you could not be more wrong. This is also the reason why bigger firms tend to hire PPC companies who offer a package deal where the ‘launch’ and ‘maintenance’ of the campaign is clubbed together, since there is no one without the other. Interestingly, while launching a good PPC campaign is not that tedious a task, maintaining it and keeping it updated is more time consuming and requires great vigilance.

When it comes to PPC, conversions are what matter the most. So let’s look at it this way, what are the ten top things that will help us get more conversions out of our already existing PPC campaign.

1) Negative Keywords Adoption

Larry Kim founder of WordStream, correctly states that ‘implementing a negative keyword strategy helps’ to ‘improve click-through rate’, ‘create more relevant adgroups’ and ‘save money’. The idea here is to prevent your ad from being triggered by certain irrelevant keyword or keyword phrases, therefore generating more relevant clicks and website traffic, which often leads to an increase in conversions.

2) Exact Match Keyword Adoption
If you choose narrow keywords, this could cut down on the cost per click (CPC), spreading your budget further, as well as attract more relevant traffic to your PPC ads and web pages. The more relevant the traffic is to your website, the higher the conversion rate you should expect. Be sure to watch the performance of the various keywords and for those that are hitting a home run, these could be set aside as Exact Match keywords and bid on more aggressively.

3) Choose All Targeting Options
While PPC started off with just desktop computers, today we have the option of showing our ads on not only tablets but also mobile phones thus helping to increase traffic and often times at lower costs. Of course as PPC specialist Steve who works for Pitstop Media Inc correctly points out, ‘traffic coming from non-computer devices behave differently compared to traffic coming from desktop or laptop computers, therefore it’s always a good idea to keep a close eye on them at first.’ It is also recommended to consider separating campaigns by device in order to take advantage of different budgets and bidding strategies for each. The image below helps to understand the setup options for this better.

4) Geo and Language Targeting
Since relevance is the basic foundation of PPC management and increasing conversions, the need for geo and language targeting may arise. It is important to target only visitors to whom your business can cater to you. For example your business may only sell on a local or national level versus globally, and only to speakers of a singular language.

Be it a keyword search for a certain location or language, browsing by country or language, bundling common combinations of locations or languages, customizing certain location or language options, one can refine campaigns to only target relevant visitors.

Image: (http://www.wordstream.com/blog/2010/11/15/geo-targeting-ppc)

5) A/B Split Testing for Ad Copy
Bradd Geddes who is the founder of Certified Knowledge and one of only two Google-approved AdWords Seminar Leaders rightly states “Don’t assume you know what is best or what should work, let the numbers tell you the story.” In the case of PPC, this is where testing will step in. Here the idea is to create multiple ad versions for each Ad Group and allow them to compete against one another. Not only will this drive more traffic to your site and future conversions but it provides the opportunity to optimize ad copy for more keywords, which in itself will increase relevant clicks while lowering necessary bidding costs. Google Adwords even offers a feature within a campaign’s setting that will show only the ad versions that are most likely to receive conversions more often, based on historical reference. It is best practice to wait until enough conversion data has populated the account before selected this ad rotation option.

6) Ad Scheduling Review
PPC managers should make sure that they stay on top of the ad campaign and know where the advert should appear as well as what time it should show up. Campaigns do not convert evenly through the day and finding the best slot for the ad is sometimes a crucial aspect of PPC. Nick DiPietro a Google certified AdWords specialist is right when he says that the intention here is to stay “competitive, especially during times when your conversions are known to be highest. Conversely, you can lower your bids during times that don’t convert as well.” In Google’s case this can be easily demonstrated as seen in the image below

Image: )

7) Search Query Report
On the last day of May 2012 Google launched the Search Query tool which as Google puts it “provides you with insight into the search queries, or terms, that are driving visits for your ads and the revenue you derive from these queries.” PPC managers looking to make their ads work to their potential will have to keep this tool handy and use it often to figure out how to continuously optimize keywords lists and build their negative keyword campaigns.

8) Display Network Advertising
This feature is a great way to keep traffic volume high which can lead to more conversions if managed smartly. Amazingly, the Display Network helps to connect with the ‘customers at the exact moment when they’re doing an activity online that relates to what you offer’ as Google rightly puts it. Opting in to the Display Network will ensure that your ads appear on content websites that relate to the keywords listed within each of your Ad Groups and by manually managing the campaigns you can further refine advertising to category of sites that you choose. Management can even be taken a step further by selecting individual websites, referred to as ‘placements’, where you prefer to have your ads display. A benefit of advertising on the Display Network over the Search Network is the ability to also show image and video ads, which tend to increase user attention and engagement. The more engaged a user is with your brand, product or service, the higher the chance they will convert.

9) Bid Management
Irrespective of whether you are using the automated bidding option or third party solutions, bid management is the most important aspect when trying to keep the cost low and the conversion rate high. Aaron Levy of SEER Interactive rightly states that sometimes ‘the top position isn’t the most profitable’ and which is why it is never a good idea to bid more that you can afford. Determining the best ad position needed to achieve a specified number of conversions is the most important objective here. Constant vigilance at this front is mandatory for those looking to increase PPC conversion and also keep the cost as low as possible. One way Google Adwords helps advertisers accomplish this is through their Conversion Optimizer tool. Conversion Optimizer can help maximize your return on investment (ROI) by automatically getting you the most possible conversions for your budget using historical conversion data from Conversion Tracking or Google Analytics. With Conversion Optimizer your ads show more often when you’re likely to get conversions and less often when conversions are less likely.

10) A/B Split Test on Landing Pages
Advertisers can increase conversion rates by testing alternative landing page designs through either A/B split tests or multi-variant testing. The idea here is if your website is already receive a high amount of quality traffic but conversions are still below satisfactory, it may be a problem with the site or landing page itself and not the advertising. A/B split testing is the most basic strategy for optimization landing page content. Two versions of a landing page, “A” and “B” can be tested and compete against one another, randomly splitting the visitor traffic between the two. With multivariate testing, advertisers mix and match several page elements such as headlines, page layout, images, text content, form fields and call-to-action messaging. In both A/B split tests and multi-variant testing, the advertiser looks to determine which page version or combination of elements produces the best results. Since setting up, managing and analyzing both testing platforms can be complex; Google Adwords offers a tool called Website Optimizer which doesn’t take long to master.
301 Redirects & Canonical URL Tutorial
by Alan Rabinowitz
Test Your Redirects with Our Redirect Checker Tool:

How to use canonical and server-side redirects for SEO

When you move a file on your server you want to be certain that you pass the proper redirect directive to the browsers and more importantly, the Search Engines. The 301 redirect is the only redirect we recommend for anyone to use without advanced knowledge of using redirects. 302 redirects are actually used by SEO’s for some specific reasons such as moving domain names from an old domain.com to a new domain.com

Apache | ASP | ASP.NET | Windows IIS | Coldfusion | Sun

301 Redirects & Canonical Redirects for Apache

This is done on the invisible file named “.htaccess” this file is located in the root of your Web Server.

See how to Force all Pages to https below…

For a single page redirect (NEVER use a 302 make sure it says either “Permanent” or “301” in the file if it doesn’t it will pass a 302 by default:

redirect 301 /old-file-name-html http://www.yourdomain.com/new-file.html

or

redirect permanent /old-file.html http://www.yourdomain.com/new-file.html

Notice all that is needed is one space between the old path and the new URL. The new URL must contain an Absolute URL: meaning it uses http://www.yourdomain.com/yourfile.html. If there is a space in the file name use %20 otherwise it will not work, you can only leave one space and that is between the old file path and the new url. Here is an example:

/old%20file.html http://www.yourdomain.com/new-file.html

Apache Server Canonical Redirect
(non-www to www):

This should always be done as some search engines do not properly understand the difference and may count it as a duplicate page, additionally if you use domain.com/index.html or domain.com/index.php the Search Engine might get lost. Since Google is the most popular Search Engine, it also happens to be a bit archaic in its handling of canonical issues and redirects. What Google will see as the same page duplicated on your site (In reality it’s all the same page).

domain.com
domain.com/
www.domain.com/
www.domain.com
domain.com/index.html
www.domain.com/index.html

Since Google favors penalties over relative content you need to make sure you NEVER link to your home page as “index.html” or any other file extension. The automated factors of the Google algorithm would hurt your rankings without warning assuming that you have a higher potential of spam from duplicate content. Google generally does not notify webmasters of penalties, so you could be spending years trying to resolve an issue like this. Make all your links Absolute (Full URL) at least to your home page, so any link on your site should always link to “http://www.yourdomain.com/” be sure to use the trailing slash as some servers will pass a redirect to the trailing slash if you do not, and this will be a 302 redirect. This is a known issue on WebStar Server, an old Mac Platform web server that has no redirect capabilities.

ALWAYS:
http://www.yourdomain.com/
NEVER:
http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html -Not direct to the domain.
http://www.yourdomain.com – No Trailing Slash

Now for the .htaccess canonical redirect for the NON-www. to the www.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

NOTE: Some Versions of Apace require an extra line or two of code for SymLinks and a different structure of the rewrite rule as follows:

RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

To Move To a NEW Domain and redirect both www and non-www versions:
(This is a change of address for a domain. Old Domain to New Domain 301 Redirect)

RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.domain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.NEW-domain.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

A More advanced version will even allow you to 301 your IP address and any subdomain:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.domain\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

The above code will 301 your non-www to your www, as well as redirect your IP address as a 301 to your www.

For IP Redirection Use:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^12\.34\.567\.890
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

For www to non-www:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.domain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

For Hosting on Certain Servers:

Godaddy .htaccess use:

RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

When using the www. for Godaddy use:
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^www\.domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

In the above we removed the ! that we use on other hosting systems, also note the use of capital and lowercase where it would appear as: RewriteCond %{http_host} !^www\.domain.com [nc]

To redirect your http pages but NOT your https pages use:
Say for instance, your secure certificate was not created as www.domain.com, but was instead issued as domain.com then you would need to use the following and be sure to combine this with ABSOLUTE links (absolute links use the full URL), or you may unintentionally cause duplicate https and http paths.

RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^80
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L,QSA]

To Redirect ALL HTTP pages to HTTPS using a 301: (Force all pages to https)

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

Additionally some servers require an extra line of code:

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Forwarded-Proto} !https
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

For Redirection of a directory to another directory on the same site:
RedirectMatch 301 ^/old-folder/(.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/newfolder/$1

You can even use a lower-level directory and redirect to a top-level directory:
RedirectMatch 301 ^/old-folder/directory(.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/newfolder/$1

If your pages are dynamic you can use:
RedirectMatch 301 ^/old-folder/?(.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/newfolder/$1

To redirect all pages of a directory you no longer need/use (removing /blog/) to the root:
RewriteRule ^foldername/(.*)$ /$1 [R=301,NC,L]

301 Redirects & Canonical Redirects:
Microsoft IIS Web Servers

To Perform this you need administrative access to the IIS Server Application. If you do not have this then you can do the redirects in ASP or PHP.

Single Page Redirect:
1. Open Internet Services Manager then “right-click” on the file or folder you want to redirect to a new page or folder.
2. Select “redirection to a URL”.
3. Enter the URL where you want the redirect to go to.
4. Check the fields: “exact URL entered above” and “A permanent redirection for this resource”.
5. Click “Apply”.
PHP 301 Redirect
This is added to the page that you want to redirect to a new page, it is triggered on the request for the specific page and the file will actually return the redirect.

Single Page Redirect:

<?php
header(‘HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently’);
header(‘Location: http://www.new-url.com/’);
?>

PHP Canonical Redirect:
(non-www to www)

<?php
if (substr($_SERVER[‘HTTP_HOST’],0,3) != ‘www’) {
header(‘HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently’);
header(‘Location: http://www.’.$_SERVER[‘HTTP_HOST’]
.$_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’]);
}
?>

Redirects & Canonical Redirects for Active Server Pages (ASP)

Single Page Redirect:
This is placed on the page you are redirecting and is triggered when someone tries to access the page.

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status=”301 moved permanently”
Response.AddHeader “Location”, “http://www.domain.com/”
%>

ASP Canonical Redirect:
(non-www to www):
This code should be inserted into a global include file or any script which is executed for every page on the site before the page output begins. If your programmers are using ASP.net and/or they are not using a global file, you need to have them address this issue or perform the Canonical Redirect from the IIS Server Application (as above).

<%
If InStr(Request.ServerVariables(“SERVER_NAME”),”www”) = 0 Then
Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently”
Response.AddHeader “Location”,”http://www.”
& Request.ServerVariables(“HTTP_HOST”)
& Request.ServerVariables(“SCRIPT_NAME”)
End if
%>

301 Redirects for ASP.NET

For Single Pages:

<script runat=”server”>
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
Response.Status = “301 Moved Permanently”;
Response.AddHeader(“Location”,”http://www.domainname.com/new-page.aspx”);
}<…

Canonical Redirect for ASP.NET (ASPX):

For ASP.NET you need to do this individually in the Windows IIS Internet Services Manager or Use The ASP Code above in a global file that will process the redirect BEFORE any other processes.

301 Redirects for Macromedia ColdFusion

Since cold fusion is usually hosted on Windows, Linux, and Sun. The .htaccess and Windows IIS tutorials above will have solutions for the Canonical and redirects. This is for a Single Page Redirect embedded directly into the file:

<cfheader statuscode=”301″ statustext=”Moved permanently”>
<cfheader name=”Location” value=”http://www.new-location.com/”>

301 Redirects for Sun Web Servers

In order to do this on a SUN platform you have to rewrite the SUN Web Server’s standard action of always using a 302 redirect to always use a 301 redirect. You have to open the obj.conf configuration file and add the following lines below the <Object name=”default”> line:

<Client code=”302″>
Output fn=”set-variable” error=”301″ noaction=”true”
</Client>

The above will make the SUN webserver to return 301 permanent redirect responses for all redirects. If you only want to use a 301 permanent redirect response for certain URLs or files, you can add the following to the bottom of obj.conf:

<Object ppath=”path”>
<Client code=”302″>
Output fn=”set-variable” error=”301″ noaction=”true”
</Client>
</Object>

Top | Apache | ASP | ASP.NET | Windows IIS | Coldfusion | Sun
Catching Up on Search in 2012
by Alan Rabinowitz

Since my last post on search engine market shares in 2008, Google’s dominance in the U.S. and worldwide markets has only risen to even loftier heights. However, with signals in place that 2012 could see once vital Yahoo lose even more ground to Google and Bing, which didn’t yet exist in 2008, it’s worth a look to see how the search engine landscape has changed over the past few years.

2009: Replacing MSN Search, Live Search, and Windows Live Search, Microsoft launched Bing on June 3, 2009 amid much media fanfare. By the end of 2009, Microsoft/Bing’s market share was 10.7%, representing a growth of approximately 2.7% over the former Microsoft search engines it replaced.

With Google’s market share growing from 63% to 65.7% over the course of 2009, it became apparent that Bing was pulling users from other smaller search engines, most notably AOL which saw its market share drop a staggering 20% in that year. Yahoo, in comparison dropped less than two percentage points, but was still on the market share’s losing end.

2010: Looking back at 2010 Q4 market share statistics from around the world, the real runaway story of 2010 was Google which crossed 70% of worldwide searches in 2010 to end the year with a 71% market share. In the U.S., this figure was even higher. Bing held steady at 9.8% of global searches, again at the expense of smaller search engines. Smaller search engines shrank to less than 5% of all search traffic. Yahoo, showing the first signs of real trouble, dropped from a 20% market share to 14.5% to end the year on a disappointing note.

2011: In 2011, Google surged to an incredible 89.94% market share worldwide at one point, leaving very little of the pie left to its competitors to divide. According to Read Write Web, February 2011 marked the first time Bing overtook Yahoo. That month, Bing outranked Yahoo by a half percentage point. Of course, this seems like peanuts compared to Google, but is still significant.

2012: Is Yahoo over? The proof may really be in the market share data. Looking at a comparison just between December 2011 and January 2012 finds the once dominant search engine slipping more than 4% in its search share, dropping from 15% to 11% world wide. In comparison, Bing gained a .42% — small gain, but still better than losing a half point.

Future predictions are calling for the race for solid second place to really heat up this year between Yahoo and Bing. Yahoo currently uses the Bing results and has constantly changed search providers in the past they served Google results. AOL and Ask are both expected to further deteriorate.

What do you think the future holds for search engines? Will Google continue to reign supreme?

With Bing’s Social Integration into search paving a new frontier for the Search Engine landscape we will have to see if they can pull some search rank percentages from this new social feature. Considering that Facebook search only searches Facebook profiles, it would be interesting to see if a union of Bing and Facebook with bring competitive market share to the table. Since Google seems to revamp social sites with social circles to try to cut into Facebook’s social share (adding rumors that Google + will help rankings to gain a user-base of marketers buzzing), it would be interesting to see Facebook strike back and enter the Search landscape by either integrating bing or buying a search application.
Search Engine Optimization 2009 Trends – Past, Present & Future
by Alan Rabinowitz

This year makes 10 years that I personally have been optimizing sites. That being said it also marks a point where SEO is becoming a flooded market with every Joe Schmoe able to be an SEO professional and every large SEO firm hiring every Tom, Dick, and Harry, not that I do not like large SEO firms, as SEO Image is on its way to being one. Nor does one need 10 years of experience, seeing as I had clients ranking in Top spots in 1999, however, the SERPS were different then and so was SEO.

So here’s my recap and mini-trend info based on how I see it having 10 years of excessive hands-on experience (Yes, that means I still work on client sites) ranking clients for numerous extremely competitive terms.

SEO In The late ’90s
90% on-page SEO 10% link popularity, although most traffic in the ’90s came because we linked and traded links freely with related sites because that was a good percentage of the traffic most sites received then. Less can from search and banner ads were abundant.

SEO in the Early 2000s
On-Page SEO making 40% Link Popularity 60% probably more. The dawn of link popularity as being more important than on-page work, which included many sites interlinking and using subdomains. Large firms and companies that had all their client banned for creating interlinked networks that included hundreds of their clients. Also the dawn of shady SEO firms and tactics.

SEO in the Mid 2000s
75% Link Popularity about 25% On-Page depending on the industry. The dawn of Social Media sites and people who seem to have endless time to socialize online. Search empowers more businesses and replaces the Yellow Pages in many households. Google triumphs over its competitors.

SEO In the Late 2000s
80% link popularity, some cases 90%, about 20% on-page SEO dependent on the industry and the competition. SEO is mainstream and many sites are using it. Link building surges and links become a commodity and are brokered. The PageRank toolbar loses much of its value for ranking purposes but is still in existence for public viewing.

The Future
As social media sites get spammy and offer less original content, they may get devalued, after all, if you shopped online this past holiday season you probably found it hard to find retailers under the flood of price comparison sites and blogs that all review the same products. Regional control and browser-based search results (via cookies) will all control the search results (see the next post). Link popularity will still be a heavy practice, but the valuation will make it even more complex as new algorithms and link determination factors will be utilized. On-Page will have more value and site size will be less important. Informational sites may lose value in comparison to exact match sites and sites that are NOT blogs with reviews of everything under the sun. Category (relationship) based search engine optimization will be integrated further and higher valued. Superior conversion based pay per click management will be more important.
Google Has 80% of Worldwide Market Share! Total Domination
by Alan Rabinowitz

A report from Hitslink, an analytics firm, states that Google has close to 80% of worldwide search traffic and market share. Those numbers indicate the importance of marketing on Google and should make businesses consider BOTH SEO and PPC campaigns as viable marketing solutions.

With new search engines popping up and trying to compete, it seems unlikely that anyone could achieve dominance to this extent or even have a shot at competing with the Google Search World (which I now call the Internet).

Many businesses approach us looking to try to avoid the cost of PPC by developing a natural campaign. While we do believe it is extremely important to have a natural online presence, there is much to say for a properly managed advertising and Pay Per Click campaign. Many businesses can run successfully with PPC alone. Gaining a presence in both the natural and paid sectors will offer double the exposure. Cap that with strategic advertising on industry related portals and niche sites, and you can have an effective business.
What If… Google Buys Yahoo?
by Alan Rabinowitz

What if…the testing of Google Adwords on Yahoo is really something else? What if Yahoo is trying to help Google determine the value of Yahoo if adwords were to be part of Yahoo. Since Google’s main revenue is Google Adwords, it makes sense to devote multiple avenues to paid search. A Google buyout of Yahoo?

This would achieve 80% to 90% of all online natural and paid searches, is this really the reason? The control of the Search Industry to one single multiplied giant would almost be, if not, a monopoly on Search. Making a top 10 listing for both natural and paid search twice as valuable.

Since I read the press release for the new partnership, I have thought from a business perspective. Maybe I am just planting ideas here, but if I owned Google and wanted to monopolize the Search Industry what would I do? Glad I asked, its simple I would buy Yahoo!

Yahoo is worth more than just a Search Engine in many ways. They capitalize on buying and developing social sites like Yahoo Answers (which beat out Google Answers) and MyBlogLog. Yahoo also has a large email and portal user base to boot.

Think about it, it would be total domination of Search if Google bought Yahoo! Many people do not remember a few years back when Yahoo did in fact served Google natural results. That partnership however, did add more authority to Google’s leadership in search quality at that point in time when they were only starting to emerge as the leader.

Why wouldn’t they consider MSN ads if a potential MSN buyout is in the air? The timing does not make $ense. Perhaps there is another potential partnership under way.

Food for thought is it an SE Conspiracy? Potential new buyout? Marketing Strategy? Battle of the Big Brands?

–>You decide.