This is a very interesting time, as we’ve got multiple projects requiring keyword research, and very different requirements:

• Revisiting a national marketer’s site after almost 2 years of client inactivity
• Finessing a technology client’s site after doing our PPC experiments
• Optimizing a couple of new healthcare technology sites
• Starting up a PPC campaign for a client marketing to IT managers

Working on new sites is always like solving a puzzle, because you have to dig into their business quickly, take the keyword research you have, and apply our marketing experience to make recommendations about how the site should be structured. You have to think about the one person making the initial search (when they have a vague idea of how to solve their problem), and then multiple visits from multiple people as the solution is researched, the company is closely inspected, and the search activity becomes a genuine lead. You have to write for awareness, consideration and evaluation, writing good marketing copy, but interweave the best search terms in such a way that the prospect doesn’t notice.

Technology companies are especially challenging, because you use the vocabulary of an engineer, who may be searching on heat dissipation, cooling, fans, heat sinks, or thermal management. (Doesn’t that sound just like an engineer? Optimistic that the problem can be completely controlled, if the right technology can be found.) Over the space of a few months, a leading edge technology will engender more and better searches as the topic gets presented at conferences and in the trades, so we have to stay open to the change, refine our research, and revise our strategy. Quickly adapting to the trend gets you a lot more search, because you’ve already established some authority for the topic.

The PPC campaign for IT managers is also very interesting professionally. The client had been with a PPC agency on the West Coast, but it was obvious that they didn’t do their homework…generic keywords, vague terms, scattershot campaigns, and an absurd offer. After doing technology marketing for 20+ years, I understand that our clients’ prospects are usually very intelligent, marketing-averse people. Fortunately, I’m curious about technology, like to dig into the details, and can generally help the client communicate more clearly–and certainly more persuasively, but without the condescending cuteness of “agency creative.” Taking that experience into the field of paid search, with a classified ad to communicate and one shot to get the prospect to register, requires some real focus (and the willingness to test several approaches). I’m excited about it because I get to work with some very analytical marketers, and because we’re doing an experiment which can be replicated for other clients.

Tech marketing via PPC ads isn’t easy, especially when you know only 20% of the prospects are willing to click on an ad, but if we can generate good results with this tough audience, we know the effort was worthwhile…and we do want all of our clients to succeed. Because search marketing is measurable, it’s all about the metrics and measurement of results…and in taking the time to understand the prospect and doing the keyword research to find the terms that are most likely to convert.

Search Engine Marketing isn’t just for companies with substantial marketing budgets selling nationally and internationally.  ‘Bricks and mortar’ businesses in metropolitan areas are often shocked when they discover how much search exists for their products and services in their city. 

For example, there are approximately 3,500 (broad) Google searches per month on pet grooming services in Austin, TX (metro population approx. 1.5 million).  Strategic optimization with appropriate keywords like ‘Austin dog grooming’ and ‘mobile pet grooming Austin’ could drive a substantial amount of searches to the website over time, and a pay per click campaign starts at just a nickel per click on many of those keywords.

Even better, most businesses don’t know that the local search results�at the very top of the Google search results�are a FREE service. To sign up, click on the blue link at the top of the listings for your category, then go to the bottom of the page with listings. There’s a link for Information for Business Owners. From there, complete the forms on your business, and verify by phone or post card.

If you are a small business, more people are searching for your products in your city than you think - find out how small business SEO can work for you!

Yahoo and Google have worked out some paid search advertising deal, announced yesterday. They assure us that it’s not a monopoly or merger. I don’t know what it is, though. From the linked Search Engine Land post, it sounds an awful lot like everything will be run through AdWords, with Yahoo getting to keep a share of the profits. What I want to know about is what this will do as far as the Yahoo Search Submit services go. Are all of the Yahoo paid search services coming over to the Google side or just pay-per-click and contextual advertising?

Guess I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself in what is sure to be a very gradual roll out that already has the anti-trust people in the Senate very, very interested…

It was recently The Holidays, which means business gifting along with the usual slate of presents for friends and family. When I was little, it was always an exciting time because dad would come home with gift baskets from vendors and clients. They contained strange and wondrous things, like cheese that didn’t seem to require refrigeration! And candy!

As an intern, coming up with, purchasing, assembling, packaging, and mailing gifts for clients became my responsibility. The first year, we had a handful of clients and I was on a month-long break from college. Since I’m a bit of a rock star in the kitchen, we did tins of handmade gourmet cookies, fudge, and my great-grandmother’s pecans. Last year, we did hat boxes filled with local goodies from bakeries, candy makers, tea shops, coffee roasters, and the great spicy Nuts on a Hot Tin Roof from the Houston Junior League’s cookbook.

You can’t really do that level of handiwork and personalization as your client base gets bigger and bigger. I understand ordering from one of the many corporate gift catalogs that start arriving mid-August. Over December, we had some things arrive in the mail to thank us for providing services, for using this service or that. Two stand out especially to me because they are gifts to us, their clients, from competing services–Google’s AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing.

One caveat: most of our clients are tech or b2b, whose demographics overwhelmingly prefer Google. This means we spend a lot less on pay per click advertising services with Y!SM than we would were we b2c-focused. What we spend isn’t insignificant, though. Which is why, when these arrived on the same day, one looked a lot better than the other.

From Yahoo!, we got a card that has seeds in the paper, so you can plant it and grow a mystery plant. It came mis-addressed–wrong first name, wrong business name, right address. Makes me wonder if Joe over at Rhino Engines and Transmissions has a fancy box of Yahoo! swag. A couple of weeks later, one of those roll-up USB keyboards arrived, in Yahoo! purple, natch. While it smells so strongly of chemicals you’d be afraid to touch it, you can use it in the bathtub or a sandstorm. This is a poor way to say thank you to a company who spends the cost of a house (albeit one in a marginal neighborhood) with you every year. Especially the messing up the address part.

The same week the seed card arrived, a precision-engineered box the size of a trade paperback arrived. Nestled inside the center hollow was this, with a nice little note and a gift card…

From Google, we have a very nifty 2GB flash drive that’s the size of a credit card with carrying case and a charitable donation gift card for $100 to DonorsChoose. DonorsChoose.org is a great thing. Teachers from poor districts register for what they really need for their classrooms, and you can give toward it. We helped outfit a 1st grade class with magnetic marker boards in a school in Queens that has a 95% poverty rate. The last thing we need is more exotic mystery cheeses that don’t need refrigeration. This was a great idea, providing something fun and useful for me and for people who really need it.

It’s obvious that only a corporate behemoth like the mighty Google could do something like this, and I’m not suggesting that this should be the norm for most companies. The important difference here isn’t how much one cost over the other. It’s about the thought that goes into it. Yahoo! would have been better off not sending anything than sending something that looks like it got bought from the picked-over shelves of the 24-hour CVS on Christmas Eve. It’s simple–you put your name on something and it becomes an emissary of your company. You know how in Scrooged, Bill Murray sends out towels embroidered with his network’s logo as Christmas gifts? Don’t be that guy.