May 2008 Archives
.style1 { margin-left: 80px; } As I promised last week, here are step by step instructions for creating a free MSN’s Live Product Search feed. In case you are not sure what a Live Search Product Feed is, we will prepare a list of items to include in Microsoft’s product search engine. First you will need an Windows Live account, which will also give you A Hotmail e-mail address good for using in irritating forms when you would rather not receive Spam. A Windows Live ID, required to sign into your Windows Live account. Once you sign-up and navigate
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Continue reading Create a Microsoft Windows Live Product Feed
This week Portent Interactive is excited to welcome our newest member of the team, copywriter Amanda Halm. Hi Amanda! Jade asked me to write some SEO copywriting pointers that I just finished. Since these sound so proprietary-like, I just had to sneak them past Ian to share with you. So enjoy and *shhhh* Don't tell the boss. Select one to four keywords. Writing friendly copy for organic search is all about targeting specific search engine queries. Select one to four search queries that will fit within a 65 characters. Selecting more than four queries will dilute your page content and
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Continue reading Basic SEO Copywriting in a Nut Shell
Google Products are listed on the search engine result pages of Google’s Shopping category. Each listing is a product that was submitted by a merchant. Listing your own products is free, so why not try it out? Here’s how to set up your very own Google Product Feed. Go to www.google.com/base, click on "Data Feed" and login with your Google Account login. Click on "create another account to manage" enter the name of your site, display URL and optional description. Next we’ll create the feed. Create a new Excel spreadsheet with these headings: Title Description Price Image link Link These
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Continue reading Create a Google Product Search Feed
Know Your Search Engine Optimization Competition When it comes to Search Engine Optimization, your competitors may not be whom you think. One of the first things I ask for from new SEO clients is a list of competitors. This usually arrives from their marketing office and includes other companies that provide the same product or service as our client. This in-sector competitor list contains useful information, especially for researching keywords and phrases. But, while there will be overlap, this is not their List of Internet Competitors. Internet Competitors are companies that occupy the same marketing space that your company occupies
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Continue reading Competitive Rubber Chicken Research for Search Engine Optimization
This article is part of a continuing series, From Seattle - Search Engine Optimization - To You. An easy to understand explanation of SEO. The SEO Preflight Before diving into a new SEO project I want to understand what challenges the web site faces and, of course, the opportunities. Call it my SEO Pre-flight for Fitness Program. To design a custom fitness program a personal trainer will begin by testing your strength and stamina. How would you feel if that trainer asked you to bench press 300 pounds during your first visit? Unless you are an advanced or elite class
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Continue reading Search Engine Optimization Pre-flight - Analytics
From Seattle - Search Engine Optimization - To You All SEO professionals face a difficult task when explaining their work in ways that are : Understandable Meaningful Actionable I enjoy talking about Search Engine Optimization at Seattle area events and discussing SEO in everyday terms with our clients from around the USA—it’s a highlight of my work. So I decided that a fun challenge will be to explain, from my desk in Seattle, Search Engine Optimization and how it works in simple usable terms. SEO Definition I’ll start with my own definition of SEO. I wrote this awhile ago
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I know something you don’t. A marketing secret. It’s really, really interesting. Not amazing, but learning it can expedite your marketing career quite nicely. Luckily, It doesn’t require a fancy degree or months of monk-like dedication in a cave to master. It’s less of a learned technique and more of a psychological sleight-of-hand, but not a mean one. Just....insightful, I suppose. What’s particularly striking is that, given the simplicity of this technique, it is used by a seldom few. This is stunning, because some industry veterans believe this one little technique is the make-or-break, sacred bedrock of any marketing
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Continue reading A Marketing Secret: I Know Something you Don't
These days Ask.com seems to be flailing, desperately trying to control the bleeding of is its’ visitor base and PPC advertisers. In the world of PPC search engine marketing, I have found increasingly less value from Ask’s paid search advertising program and stopped using their service altogether for several clients. If you cannot get a keyword to convert in 2008, one that easily converted in 2007, and especially during the keyword’s peak season, something is terribly wrong. Another issue I am experiencing is Ask double serving ads: One is from Google, as a Content Network partner. The other comes from
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Continue reading Ask PPC Advertising Pushing Me Away
Much like the mystery of the Big Mac’s secret sauce and Colonel Sanders 11 herbs and spices, we’ve all speculated what exactly makes up the closely guarded formula that determines Google’s PPC Quality Score. What are all the factors? How much weight does each factors carry? How can I exploit this to my advantage?! Last week Search Engine Journal posted screen shots of tiny suspicious text beneath Google AdWords ads. The text icluded pScore, mCPC and thresh. This spurred much discussion concerning what these terms mean and why they appeared. Google issued a statement to Search Engine Journal citing a
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Continue reading Google Leaks AdWords Quality Score
