Ah, the search query report. The bane of some PPC’ers existence. No, not because it isn’t useful, but because every time you go through it, it pisses you off. “Google matched me to what?!”

Some days it’s good for a laugh [insert your best example in the comments], but some days it’s only good for an imaginative string of profanities flying out of your mouth that your co-workers never heard, or maybe don’t even understand. Then they stay away from you the rest of the day.

And if that’s the case (the co-workers staying away part), then that will give you some extra time to use the search query report to its fullest advantage. So let’s talk about that, instead. Focus on the good. Breathe…

Negative Keywords – Sorry, I have to state the obvious. That’s why we all know about this report in the first place; but just in case you don’t know about the search query report: it’s a list of all the search queries people actually typed in the search box, which triggered your ads.

Let’s say you sell scrapple (it’s a food, look it up) and you have the broad keyword scrapple. You look through your search query report and see you got clicks from scrabble and Snapple. Out come the profanities and in go the negative keywords – scrabble and scrapple (We’ll overlook the fact that maybe you shouldn’t be using the broad keyword scrapple anyway. That’s a topic for a different day).

Bottom line – the search query report helps you find naughty keywords and add them as negatives so you don’t get these unwanted clicks in the future.

Filter out the crap.
Cut down on unqualified clicks.
Improve ROI.

New Keywords for PPC – Now this is where it gets fun. Let’s say you sold five tons of scrapple in one order to McDonald’s for their new McScrapple sandwich. You jump into your PPC campaign and see the keyword was… scrapple. Then you dig deeper and into the search query report and see the actual keywords was from the tail term – the best scrapple for sandwiches. My friend, you have found a gem, and we’re not talking about the new McScrapple.

Will this new term be high volume? Maybe not. Is it worth adding it as its own keyword in its own adgroup with a specific ad and possibly a specific landing page? Shit, yeah! (That’s a good time to curse. Screw your co-workers.)

Not only can you have a new adgroup with keywords and ads for “Scrapple for Sandwiches” (and all the derivative terms you think are applicable), but you might even want your landing page to showcase how delicious your scrapple looks on a bagel or some melba toast (Fact – I do not actually know what melba toast is. I should probably Google it). Who knows, maybe the King wants to unleash a scrapple sandwich as well. And when they look on Google for a scrapple provider, you’ll be ready.

New Keywords for SEO – So maybe your “Scrapple for Sandwiches” find doesn’t have to be just a PPC landing page, but a welcome, navigable addition to your website. Title tag, description tag, content, images, incoming links, all the good stuff (kind of like scrapple). You now have a new page, with real content, with potential for conversions from organic traffic. All because you mined a search query report.

Blog Posts / Content / Q&A – When you really dive into a search query report, you’ll be amazed at what people search (and even more amazed on the fact that they clicked on your unrelated ad, more cursing is fine). But one trend you’ll start to notice as that people play Google Jeopardy and type their queries in the form of a question. “What is in scrapple” is a good example.

So what do you do with a question-phrase like this?

Well, this might not be a high-converting term since it’s someone in info-seeking mode, not necessarily buy-mode. But you can still use it to your advantage.

You may not want to include it in your PPC campaign, but it would make one hell of a blog post or even a resource on your site. After all, if you make scrapple, you’re the expert. Let everyone know you are the expert. Be the expert, Grasshopper (Fact – there are no grasshoppers in scrapple).  So if McD’s or the King are considering your scrapple for their next sammich, they may consider the fact that you really do know your scrapple when deciding on a scrapple-maker.

Also, it could make great link-bait material. Either natural link-bait or even for outreach. So while you may not actually get any scrapple sales from this particular term, you may get more links, shares, etc., and that has an indirect impact on your ROI by aiding your SEO efforts.

Local Trends – If you’re running campaigns in different locations, you may notice people search differently in different regions. Insulating your attic in the US, is known as draft-proofing your attic in London. Sneakers is used more in New York vs tennis shoes in Chicago. And of course scrapple is a Philly term vs…well, there really isn’t much of a comparison anywhere else. Anyway, if you notice local trends in your search query report, you can use this data to custom tailor your keywords and ads in certain geographic campaigns.

A Few Other Ways to Use Search Query Reports –

1)      If you need logs for refunds from the engines (proof you are getting clicks from negative terms), this is some great data to help your cause

2)      Want to know if you should test match types in different adgroups? Analyzing the conversion data on queries can help aid that decision

3)      Geek Fun – at your next PPC party (PPC Cruise) pull out your “Best of” List. Always good for a laugh.

And while all of these tips are good, I am sure there are even more creative ways to use this report for PPC, SEO, or any form of marketing (or nerd-partying). If that’s the case, be sure to let us know in the comments and I’ll update this list with a link to your site/blog.

Also, special thanks to @Matt_Umbro (the genius behind #ppcchat) who inspired this post with a tweet. And I’m giving a nod to @AndrewBaker72 from CleverSquare who will be talking about the Google Analytics Match Search Query Report in a future post on his own blog.

Final note – No cows or pigs were harmed in the making of this blog post, but they do make great scrapple!

+Mark Kennedy

As SEOM Interactive continues to grow, we realized it’s time for a new office. In our search for a new space, we didn’t want just any building. We wanted something special.

Special like… astronaut special.

SEO Specialist Lauren Zumpano experiences the Johnsville Centrifuge

Located at 780 Falcon Circle, Suite 103, Ivyland, PA, our new office sits on the first floor of the Johnsville Centrifuge and Science Museum, where all of our country’s pioneering astronauts – including Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, and Alan Shepard – trained prior to embarking on their historic missions in space.

This is the largest human centrifuge ever built, boasting a 4,000 horsepower motor capable of swinging the massive 50-foot arm at linear speeds in excess of 170 mph, and generating up to 40 G’s of force. All of the astronauts involved in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs trained here at the world’s most sophisticated dynamic flight simulator.

The Johnsville Centrifuge and Science Museum seeks to provide the community with education and entertainment in the study of aerospace sciences. They restore, preserve and protect the centrifuge and other artifacts in order to best serve their mission of education. They showcase space artifacts at local events and welcome members of the community to tour the building to enjoy their own space experiences. To learn more about the Johnsville Centrifuge and Science Museum, click here.

Stop by Suite 103 for a free marketing consultation and a tour of the centrifuge!

Click here to meet the SEOM team.

As Search Engine Marketing professionals, we rely on a vast set of tools to accomplish the nitty gritty of our work. From Open Site Explorer to Mike’s Marketing Tools, there seemed to be a tool for everything. That is, until Google rolled out a new match type for PPC – Broad Match Modifier.

The new targeting feature allows you to create keyword lists that have a greater reach than “phrase” and [exact], but offers more control than broad match.

Implementing this match type has been a bit of a hassle, though, and we’ve had it up to here with the “Find, Replace” function in Excel.

So today we introduce our PPC tool: AdWords Keyword Wrapper for Broad Match Modifier.

Here’s how to use it:

1.       Visit http://www.searchenginesmarketer.com/ppckeywordwrapper/

2.       Copy & paste your keyword list into the first box marked “Enter Keywords.” For example, we used “divorce lawyer, divorce lawyers, divorce attorney, divorce attorneys, divorce law firm, divorce law firms.”

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3.       Enter keywords you want to match in the 2^nd box marked “Enter Keywords To Match.” For example, lawyer, lawyers, attorney, attorneys, law firm, law firms.

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4.       Hit “Wrap.”

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5.       Your BMM’ed keywords will generate in the final box marked “Broad Match Modifiers.” Your list will look like this: “divorce +lawyer, divorce +lawyers, divorce +attorney, divorce +attorneys, divorce +law +firm, divorce +law +firms.”

Click to Enlarge

For your (and our) convenience, we also built the classic keyword wrapper tool below. Consider this page a one-stop-shop for your keyword wrapping needs.

Is there another tool the SEM world is missing?  Let us know about it in the comments, and we’ll see what we can do.

Throwing, sponsoring, and attending events can help you not only build relationships, but also build links to your website. Here are a few ways to leverage events to your link building advantage.

Trade Shows/Conferences

Trade shows and conferences can provide an opportunity to get your company’s name and logo displayed prominently on an event organizer’s website. More importantly, you get a link for participating. If are you are a keynote speaker or session leader and have been asked to provide a speaker biography, be sure to include your company’s link in the copy you provide. Sponsors and exhibitors are oftentimes asked to include a logo, so when providing this to the event organizer, politely ask if they can hyperlink the logo to your homepage.

Getting a link if you are simply an attendee can prove more difficult, but not impossible. If you have a blog, write a post about the conference you are planning to attend. Or even a review of the event afterwards. Make sure you include the link to the event organizer’s site. You can then, in turn, send a simple e-mail letting them know you are looking forward to the conference or have reviewed their event. The hope is that the link-bait earns you a link back to your site.

Community Events

From churches to baseball teams, many local community organizations throw fundraising events and seek sponsors at various levels. This is a simple way to build brand awareness with your neighbors while doing a good deed for your community. It’s also a great way to get a link. Chances are that the organization has some sort of landing page on their website for the event which lists their sponsors. Make sure your link is there. Also consider including a link to the event on your website so visitors can see what your company is up to outside of the average workday.

Create Your Own Event

While it may sound daunting, creating your own networking event is actually quite simple. Local bars and restaurants are usually more than willing to provide a room along with food and drink specials. Select a topic, include the information on your website, and invite your network to come participate. Use Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to create broader awareness about the event. Encourage people to spread the news, and watch the links start to pour in!

Remember, events not only offer the opportunity to make industry connections, but also for you to build links to your website. No matter what you do, where you go and who you meet, always be linking.

As an SEO/PPC company, we’ve seen countless websites with the same overused stock photos. Eventually, it became a game for us! “Spot the Headset Girl” and “Where’s the Serious Guy Today.”

We thought it would make a killer interactive contest. Unfortunately, before we had a chance to implement our contest, Google launched the reverse image search feature.

So much for our game.

However, lemons… lemonade.
Que sera sera.
Whatever.

We thought we’d take this opportunity to show you How To Use the Reverse Image Search and demonstrate how it rendered our contest useless.

Let’s use Headset Girl as our example.

1. First, take a screenshot of the picture you want to hunt down and save it to your desktop.

2. Visit www.google.com and click “Images” using the top left menu.

3. Click the tiny camera graphic in the search box. This allows you to search by image.

4. Now you have two options: Either drag the image from a website into the search bar, or upload your own image. We uploaded Headset Girl since we previously saved it to our desktop.

Let’s see the results and find out just how many websites thought headset girl should represent their company.

Oh and how nice! Google thinks headset girl looks “visually similar” to Angelina Jolie!

Still not getting it?  Google provides a handy video that may help.

Every page on your website presents an opportunity to engage your site visitors. Don’t overlook the chance to show your company’s personality and connect with your potential customers.

Take a look at our 404 page, for example.  Sure, we don’t want people to land on it because it means we have a broken link somewhere, but if by chance someone gets lost while navigating our site, our 404 page gives a little insight into our company’s personality.

One of our clients, Filemaker Developer Mighty Data, keeps the attention of users even after the user has submitted a comment to their blog. By thanking users in a variety of languages, they give a nod to their multilingual team. They also want even more from their users. This thank you page asks users to submit ideas and feedback. Encouraging users to submit information builds their interest in your company, and makes it more likely that they will check your website again.

What do you do to engage your site visitors?

So you’re beginning to understand the keys to optimizing your website for the search engines; but what about video?  Last year, YouTube surpassed Yahoo! in the total number of search queries, making it the 2^nd largest search engine in the country in line behind its owner, Google.

Follow these easy steps on how to optimize your videos for YouTube.

1. Before you even visit www.YouTube.com, let’s talk about the video itself. Is the content interesting? Do you bring a fresh perspective to an age-old topic? If your audience would prefer to watch funny cat videos, you better make sure your video offers useful information people care about. Also, check the length of your video. As interesting as you may think your video is, others may not be willing to commit five minutes to watching you ramble on. Keep your video to about a minute in length – unless you have a really interesting five minutes of footage to show. If your particular topic is extensive, break it up into a series of one-minute videos.
2. Hold your horses. We’re not quite ready to jump on YouTube yet. First, optimize the filename of your video. Instead of “TVCommercial_20110624.mov,” your filename should be keyword rich, such as “FurnitureStoreCommercialSofas.mov.”
3. Ok, NOW you may visit www.YouTube.com.  Once you are signed in, upload your video. Write a succinct keyword-rich video title. Don’t let your ego get in your way. This is not a place to put your company name. Make the title count.
4. Next write a video description that entices users to watch. It should be keyword rich (not keyword stuffed) and should state a call to action; encourage users to browse your online catalog or to call to schedule an appointment. You can put a link to your website in the description field, as well.
5. Choose the most appropriate category for your video. Is it a How To? Perhaps it’s an IT-related video. By assigning the right category, you allow users searching by video type to find you.
6. Take your time specifying tags for your video. Assign just 3-5 keywords or phrases as tags.
7. You’re not done yet. Just because you’ve optimized a video doesn’t mean that’s all you can do. Just as with other social media platforms, YouTube allows users to create profiles. Optimize your YouTube profile by filling out your company’s bio with keywords and a link back to your website.

Last but not least: Share. Share. Share. YouTube considers the number of views important when ranking videos. Embed the YouTube video where appropriate. Share the link to the video on your Facebook and Twitter feeds. Share it in a LinkedIn discussion on your industry. The more views, the more popular your video, the better your video ranks.

We have a client who has a small business and a small Google Adwords campaign. They advertise in about a 20 mile radius, since anything larger would have a diminishing conversion rate.

For the sake of this example, we are not going use the client’s real name or vertical, but we will illustrate the data through a fictitious company. Let’s say this client is an indoor sports complex that offers flag football and soccer leagues.

This particular client came to us with an existing Adwords campaign with specific geo-targeting and asked if we could optimize it for better performance.

Sure, that’s what we do.

Optimization
Looking over the history of the campaign, we found quite a few areas for improvement: Negative keywords, better campaign structure, new ad copy, keyword research for more opportunities, strategic bidding – basically, the works. When all was said and done, we created an organized, improved campaign.

Then we hit launch.

Results

After the first month, we saw a moderate increase in traffic, but nothing major due to the limited geo-targeting. However, we did see a nice decrease in the CPC due to better quality scores. After looking at the search query report, the search terms were more on-target.

Analysis

However, the overall leads did not improve in the first month we ran. In fact, they went down. Not good. So after discussing the issue with the client, we found something interesting…

(Keep in mind, we work with a lot of small business, and sometimes tracking actual results is not their strong suit. We can tell them how many leads and phone calls they received through analytics and software, but when it comes to the conversion rate from leads to sales, we are sometimes at their mercy. That’s why discussions like these are so valuable.)

Using the previous month as a comparison, they had 60 leads, or about 2 per day. In the first month after launch, they had about 40 leads – a 33% decrease in lead volume.

Now the conversion rate in the new month was better than the old month. About 40% of the 40 leads converted to actual signups. So that’s 16 signups. Whereas only 33% of the leads converted to signups of the previous month, so they had 20 signups. But the previous month still performed better on a volume-basis. And that outweighed the reduction in cost.

But here was the really puzzling issue: We felt we really improved the campaign. The quality was better, the CPC was lower, the search terms looked great, the quality scores were higher, the traffic was slightly higher, the lead-to-sale conversion rate was better, so why were there less leads?

(I know these numbers are a small sample size, but with small business that is usually the case, and any decrease in leads or sales is disappointing for a small business.)

Now, for this example (and actually in the real situation) there were some constants: landing pages were the same and we ruled out any seasonality or timing issues; the leads were all phone calls, so we couldn’t track calls back to actual keywords, but we knew from the phone lead totals that the campaign was generating calls; and at the time, the Adwords campaign was his only form of marketing.

It was time to dig a little deeper. We found that in the previous month, the top search term (9 out of the top 10) were related to soccer as opposed to football. In our month, the ratio of the top ten keywords were split about 50-50 between soccer and football terms.

Why? Because we added more keywords, coupled with the fact that the quality score increased, so football terms received some better impression levels.

So after noticing this trend, I asked the client how many of the 30 leads in the previous month were soccer leads as opposed to football leads. Answer – all but 2. And how many of the 20 leads in our month were soccer? Answer – all but 5.

There is no doubt that the soccer keywords generated more leads than the football terms. So by changing that keyword ratio, we cannibalized some of our leads within the budget.

But why did soccer convert better? Some reasons are more about the sports league industry than the actual PPC campaign. Soccer was more popular in this particular region; there was more/better competition from other football league websites; football leagues are more expensive; football can be more dangerous (subject to debate), and other factors.

Optimization… Again.

Once we identified that trend, we were able to make the proper adjustments.

1)      Create separate campaigns for soccer and football with separate budgets. This would allow us to spend more on soccer and not have football terms eat up more of the budget than we would like.

2)      Bid more aggressively (within reason) for soccer terms, since we now know they convert better.

3)      Use a better landing page for football to help improve lead volume and conversion rate.

So, in the immortal words of Stan Marsh, “We’ve learned something today.” Even if you do everything right to optimize a campaign, there are still some curve balls coming your way. That’s why client feedback and communication are so important. It helps improve performance and solve issues.

Did we get more clicks, lower costs and improve ROI? Initially, yes. The client was very happy from the get-go; but it wasn’t until we discussed the actual results that we truly improved the campaign. Now the proportions are better and the leads are back up.

And that is the real win.

If you think this is a post about buying an expired domain name and 301 redirecting it to your site, you’re wrong. Search Engine Land has covered this strategy and explained why is doesn’t work. The post is older, but still holds true.

However, that still doesn’t mean you can’t use expired domains to your advantage. Let me show you how…

1. First, find a good list of expired domains. One site we use for this is www.dropday.com. Every day they update their list of domains that are expired and up for auction. They also give some pretty good data on pagerank, inbound links, etc.
2. Look through the domains and find one similar to your (or your client’s) niche. For example, let’s say you sell really cool custom-painted bicycle helmets. Are there any expired sites that would match your site? Check through the list.
3. I found one today (which will be gone by the time you read this, but that’s okay) www.whohelmets.org. So this site (a bicycle helmet site) is now a goner, and anyone linking to it will have a bad, or maybe sometime soon, a broken link.
4. Pop the URL into one of your cool link tools (Raven, OSE, or even Yahoo) and look for links pointing to that site.
5. Again, using your SEO tools, analyze the sites linking to the expired domain and try to find ones that are passing decent value.
6. For this example, we found that an interior page on a bicycle helmet law website (http://www.helmets.org/mandator.htm) was linking to this expired domain. You can find the link by viewing the source code of the page and looking for the URL
7. Contact the webmaster and let him know that he is either linking to a graveyard page or possibly a broken page. While you are at it, check his page for other broken links as well. Give him something of value he can utilize – in this case, bad link information.
8. Then ask him to replace the dead link with a link to your site. Make sure you have the right content on your site, though. In other words, create the content that was behind the purpose of this original link.
9. Hopefully between the value added and the new content the webmaster hooks you up with a very fine link.

Special thanks to Napoleon Suarez whose post on Broken Link Building inspired a lot of the methodology in this article. We just took it in a new direction. But check it out, it’s another good read.

You run a small business and you wear many hats. One day you’re the accountant, the next day the salesman. Sometimes your the chief marketing officer and other days you’re HR. Every once in a while, when you have the time, you’re the webmaster.

So you brushed up on your SEO skills, read the SEO blogs and checked out great SEO resources like the SEOMOZ website. You inserted your title tags, wrote strong, relevant content, added description and H1 tags, cleaned up broken links, etc. So your site is up to speed as far as your concerned.

Now what?

Now it’s a popularity contest. In order to increase your search engine ranking, you must have quality, relevant, in-bound links. And while that is a huge undertaking in itself, for which you may not have time for right now, there are some things you can do with your limited resources and time…

1. Chambers & Associations. Register for relevant associations, such as your Meetup group or local Chamber of Commerce. Complete your member profile with a link back to your website.
2. Local Directories. Submit your website to local business directories. Google your town’s directories, for example “Philadelphia Business Directories.” Browse the results and submit your site to the free directories.
3. Vertical Directories. Submit your website to industry-related directories. Google your industry’s directories, such as “Interior Decorating Directories” or “Home Improvement Directories.” Browse the results and submit your site to the free directories.
4. Speaking Engagements. If you participate in local events or job fairs, often these events will have dedicated websites, so request a link back to your website from the sponsors or members page.
5. Charities. Request an acknowledgment link from charities to which you donate. Charities will often have pages dedicated to organizations that make monetary contributions, as well as donations of time or services.
6. Blog. If you don’t have a blog, consider starting one. Also, contribute to other relevant blogs. Write a guest post for a well-ranked industry blog. Ensure that your blog, and other blogs in which you participate, link back to your main website.
7. Links, Links, Links. Always keep links in mind. Any time you have an opportunity to participate in industry-related conversation online, link back to your website in your comment.

A major link building effort is time-consuming, difficult, and requires a lot of attention and creativity. However, there are some thing you can do as a small business owner in the meantime until you have the time and resources to devote to this strategy. Even if you can’t do it all, just get in the mindset of giving out your website address just as you give out your name and contact info whenever you are mentioned on the web.