Posted on: June 10, 2010 by Search Master Steve
Hey guys! Search Master Steve here, Syzlak is far too busy celebrating the recent Stanley Cup victory by the Chicago Blackhawks, so I’m here to fill in.
Today, we’re going to delve into some great AdCenter features that you’ll probably all want to be very aware of as you transfer all your adverts to AdCenter in the next months. In case you forgot, Bing is now Yahoo, so you’ll want to get your ducks in a row to capture all that sweet AltaVista traffic.
AdCenter’s 3 Strongest Features
Geo-Targeting
Right from the bat, we’re targeting your geo in AdCenter. Let’s go through the steps. When you sign up an account from the US, we’ll walk you through creating your ad, specifying your budget, bids, etc. Just like Google.
Then, instead of setting you up with your ads targeted to North America, we’ll go ahead and target your ads to the world for ya.
True Geo-Targeting right when you setup an account. Only from AdCenter.
Keyword Insertion
We all know that keyword insertion, or dynamic titles, or whatever you call them (parameters? what?!), are vital part of every campaign’s ad copy. Well don’t worry, at AdCenter we’ve made sure that Keyword Insertion works just as it does on Google and Yahoo.
Simply put {keyword:xxx} into your ad, and we’ll insert your keyword if it fits within our character limits. Additionally, you can follow Google’s keyword capitalization standards and use {KeyWord:xxx} or {KEYWORD:xxx}, but we won’t follow their command and formatting.
At AdCenter we assume that you’ve created your keywords with the capitalization you’d like to use, so we won’t bother you with any other option. We’ll keep your keywords in lower case if that’s how you entered them.
Easy Tracking Integration with Google Analytics
Here’s the best feature yet. Say you use Google Analytics and want to see which keywords your visitors used to find your ad, click through, and buy your product.
You’re in luck!
With AdCenter we’ll let you use a standard variable for your ads that will cover all keywords used to see your ad. By using the {QueryString}…or, wait…{OrderItemID}, no no no, {keyword}, well, one of those probably works…anyway, plop that bitch in your tracking URL, and behold!!!!!
In Google Analytics you’ll see data for the keyword {querystring}, {keyword}, or {orderitemid} depending on which one of those you decided was the best. None of them will show you your keyword…we don’t know how to do that yet. We’re working on it, we’re thinking that it might take a couple years, though.
In the end, how’s that going to help you track your hits anyway?! You should just use AdCenter’s Analytics Package – seen below.
AdCenter Analytics Package
As you can see, AdCenter really has the user in mind, and we can’t wait to take all your money in the next couple of months.
Love,
Steve
Posted on: March 26, 2010 by Syzlak
Here’s some notes I took a long time ago about SEO & PR. It was a monthly SEMpdx thing.
I realize this is very half-assed
PR needs to expand its reach because journalists are looking to social media for news.
- Don’t just rely on a basic press release – employ photos, videos, whitepapers, podcasts.
- Optimize – Get your partners to link to the release, involve sponsors & partners.
- Improve Performance – Turn the newsroom into a more dynamic press release site. Make it more like a news oriented blog. Talk about events, have a background, images, videos, links.
- Balance the Social Life – Twitter, Facebook, SMM are your friends. Monitor what’s written about you.
- Understand it is Forever – Join in on the negative content conversations. Maybe employ PPC to push the negative sites away.
- Good Relations Take Work – update old content with new links, photos, keywords. Go back and use social bookmarking.
Posted on: May 5, 2009 by Syzlak
So for the past 2 months or so Google has been inserting their map based local listings (affectionately referred to as the 10 Pack) into broad search results. Thus, when a non-geographically targeted search was used or even when a user was not logged in, Google would show local results regardless (irregardless for you Steph). While this was certainly helpful for the user, it has become a bit of a headache for the SEO, the business owner and the online marketing director. Today, a top 5 listing does not hold the weight it once did, because for the average user positions 4-10 are now below the fold. While this is a great opportunity for local businesses to thrive, (and in today’s horrendous economic climate, I’m actually a fan of this) it makes it that much harder for the nationwide business to succeed.
Unfortunately, it would appear that Google may have gone one step further.
This morning I checked in on my allergy doctor’s website. He’d recently asked me for a few tips to increase his search rank. I was pleased to see his site in the #2 position on Google for the very broad term: allergy clinic. I was so pleased that I asked the good Hack to perform the search and bask in my pride and glory. His response?
i see some sketchy looking allergy doc at number 5
What the hell?
Undaunted, I ask my old friend Luke to give me a third set of eyes on the situation. He too saw the listing in the 5th position. So, what was going on?
Luke lives in Bend, Hack lives in the nether regions of my mind, neither of them live in Portland. Where does Google draw the “local dividing line?” Is it DMA restricted? If I lived 10 miles away, would it be the same? Was Google honestly giving an organic boost to a local listing based on my location? Yes. In fact, Luke’s company had been noticing this of late as well and even had a rather serious sounding meeting to discuss it. He’d pointed out that because of this, “running reports geographic locations in the U.S. is no longer accurate” and that it even applies “when using google.kr, google.fr, etc.”
Fantastic.
Google has just pushed down organic rankings for even more nationwide companies. It’s one thing to have the 10 Pack show up in the 4th position, but giving local companies organic precedence means that many nationwide companies will fall even further below the fold…perhaps even to the dreaded second page of results.
While this isn’t bad for the local business that wants local customers, it does pose an interesting problem for the semi-local business – the local business that wants outside customers. At the web development agency where I work, one of our clients is Legend Homes, they’re a Portland home builder that focuses on green-built homes. So, naturally we try to target Portland and Oregon keywords, but also “green” keywords. In addition, they are looking at selling homes to people who are moving to the area, not necessarily living in the area. With the vast amount of competition in the housing market (real estate, home builders, private sellers, etc), it’s already a challenge to establish solid footing with a lot of these keywords. Now, throw in the fact that listings will appear differently outside of any given location, and you’ll see the problem with Google’s new approach to local search.
Posted on: October 22, 2008 by Syzlak
Yesterday, Rand posted a rather short-sighted view on the discrepencies in SEO and PPC budgets. While, I understand his fundamental argument for increased SEO budgets, the post drew ire from myself and fellow PPC advocates. Through quick smattering of evidence, Rand showed that PPC is on the decline, everyone looks at organic listings all the time, and no one clicks on ads (paraphrasing here folks). So, aside from a simple disagreement on the purpose of PPC and the effectiveness of SEO, what am I so mad about?
To some of you this may be familiar:
This eye research has been shown countless times to illustrate the Golden Triangle of search – the red area in the top left of a SERP where users are most active, violently clicking away to their hearts’ desire on the first thing they see. Since you’re probably familiar with this research, you probably know that I used it in a post from December of 2007 about Google’s encroachment on this Golden Triangle. Shit, I’m not even the first to use it! In fact, if anybody clicked through on the link Rand gave for the pic, you would see that Inspired Impressions used it back in April of 2006 (over 2 years ago). 2 years in “search time” is an eternity. For reference, if you were to have a kid in 2000 and he were to grow up in “search time,” he’d be Robin Williams from Jack.
Here’s how SERPs look more often than not today…well at least as of December 2007 (I’ll admit when I took the screenshot)
See how our buddies at Google are putting ads into that Golden Triangle? Do you suppose that users might be clicking on those a bit more often than they did 2+ years ago? More importantly, did you see what the top listing was in the pic that Rand gave us?
Look’s like that’s a Sponsored Link, and it’s getting quite a few clicks too…
Wouldn’t it be great if current data was used to make claims of suspect? While I think that some of what Rand is arguing is prudent (SEO could use a bit more money and focus for many companies), I do not agree with either his methods or his implied conclusion (we didn’t get a conclusion out of Rand, so I don’t want to put words in his mouth).
The fact of the matter is, PPC can drive instant gratification (traffic), qualified visitors (through ad copy and keyword targets), motivated visitors (drop ‘em on a landing page…they’ve seen everything – they’ve seen it all), and it can do all of this for as many or as few pages as desired on as much or as little a budget available.
Market size is also a determining factor of PPC/SEO budget. When I worked in local search for a few years when it was first blossoming, I would never have suggested to the 100 plumbers in Atlanta that they could spend their budget on trying to beat each other, as well as the national giants, on organic listings. For some industries, it’s pretty easy to compete in the less competitive field of PPC with focused keywords than to try to tackle 8,000 competitors in organic. So, why not allocate $100 towards a PPC budget that will pay off, and do so quickly, as opposed to spending thousands on SEO – especially when thousands aren’t available?
I hate to call out my pal David Mihm, but I also had a problem with his comment:
Well, honestly, it all stems from Kate’s comment, but I was more irked by this one. Not to be a downer, but sometimes in a “down economy” (I call it a depression, but ok 
), some companies may have to go with the cheap & quick solution just to stay alive. A lot of times, that’s the small businesses. Small businesses need to be present, build their brands and get visitors “in the door” just to make it to the next step-especially in a “down economy.”
I know Mihm, I know his work, he’s damn good and any small business would be wise to pay for his SEO services. Hell, businesses of any size would be wise to spend money on SEO; but for a lot of them, it’s just not in the cards right now. Not everything comes down to SEO having a bad reputation, being misunderstood & misrepresented, complex or the rest of the excuses a lot of us use; sometimes, SEO is just not what a business needs when we’re trying to sell it.
Posted on: July 1, 2008 by Syzlak
Hey reader!
Since I’ve gotten back into the swing of things over here at SyzlakSEM, I deemed it time to break out the ol’ Like-Like Link post. Today’s link post will consist mostly of links found today when I remembered that this post was due yesterday. Without further delay
1. Matt McGee has decided to have a job again. Pussy
2. Google decided that my life was just too easy and so they found a way to crawl Flash. Thanks assholes. Do you know how hard it is to deal with a Flash programmer? They’re insufferable bitches. Seriously, I have Flash programmers (some of them even like the oh so hoity title of “designers”) that are friends and they’re cool, but when it comes down to it asking them to change their precious Flash in any way is like asking a 4 year old to share ice cream. Now we’ll have a whole new generation of shitty looking web sites that aren’t planned out with proper architecture and are just projects to show off how fast someone can make a menu animate. I’m thrilled. Thanks again.
3. You know women? You know, like, models? I don’t mean Tyra or Naomi, but like the models on the lower tier. The catalog, newspaper, department store models. Not terribly flashy and they couldn’t make it in Milan; but all in all, damn fine looking women that would make you take a second glance 
or make Martin Lawrence go “DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN.” That’s what I’m talking about. The women that probably get stared at on a subway or train, get hollered at, demeaned, etc. when they really would like/should be treated like anyone else. The women that probably don’t get asked out often enough because they seem unapproachable, those that when interviewed (assuming they’d get interviewed for something) always say that they’re a “t-shirt and jeans kind of gal.” You know these?
Yeah, me too. Except the thing that dork-ass guys like myself fail to realize is that the “jeans” in question are probably a designer pair from a boutique clothing shop in the ritzy part of town and the “t-shirt” was found during a sale (yet not ON sale) at some rich ass store. What we don’t understand is that when they say they’re a “t-shirt and jeans kind of gal,” that means that they feel comfortable in their $300+ outfit. Which is nice I suppose, I’d hate for them to feel uncomfortable in a $1200 dress all day long. However, this is the very root of the problem, that’s not what we thought that sentence meant. Every fucking guy on the planet reads that sentence to mean “I like Levi’s with holes in them and any old t-shirt that fits nicely. I like to eat pizza, drink at least 4 beers a night, go out on the town often – but only to the sports bar ’cause I don’t like to get bored with conversation. Oh, and I really like to just lounge around all weekend.” Why do men think that? Because we’re idiots. Why are we idiots? Because we don’t realize that we’ve described a guy. Then when one of us has a chance to be with a “t-shirt and jeans kind of gal,” we fuck it up because we don’t know why they’re different from our preconceived notions.
Thankfully, Google can help us out on this one too.
4. Long set up on #3 I know, but I couldn’t just go the cheap route and link out. So now onto the blogger’s choice awards. This year they have a category called Worst Blog of All Time. Currently our friend SEOHack is in the “running” (read: nominated) for the prestigious award. Does he deserve it? No, but you should go vote for him anyway. Sure, his blog ain’t so bad, and yes it’s focused on SEO (kinda) so it couldn’t ever win this award, but who cares. It’s safe to sign up too! Those ass-holes ain’t sent me shit.
Fin
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Hey guys! Search Master Steve here, Syzlak is far too busy celebrating the recent Stanley Cup victory by the Chicago Blackhawks, so I’m here to fill in.
