On the Spot: HackerSafe's Cresta Pillsbury

by David Booth
Founding Partner at WebShare, LLC

If you’re doing conversion marketing and statistical testing on your website and you haven’t explored trust logos yet, then you’re missing out. It’s no accident that you see the same logos appearing on more sites day after day - it’s because they’re working.

These little trustmarks have the ability to get more people to push the button, sign up for the newsletter, enter their credit card information, or even pick up the phone and call the number. We do quite a bit of testing with trust logos, and one of the most successful ones we’ve come across is the HACKERSAFE logo, an image that by now you surely recognize:

Want to try Hackersafe for yourself? Get started now at a discount!

We asked HackerSafe Senior Director of Business Development Cresta Pillsbury to talk about what’s new at HackerSafe and why this logo and program have been so successful in increasing website conversion rates:

One way to test out if the HACKERSAFE logo works for you is to get it at a discount through WebShare, and then use Google’s new Website Optimizer tool to set up and run a conversion marketing test. Whether you’re looking to increase leads, sales, downloads, signups, or clicks, it’s very likely that this little logo can help you make better use of the visitors you have on your site.Statistical experimentation can tell you if you gain anything (and how much) by making small changes to your website, and can be the most powerful tool in your search marketing arsenal.

For a business to get a search and conversion marketing strategy on the right track, a wonderful and essential step is to include a blog on the site. Whether you’re selling products, disseminating information, attracting email addresses for your mailing lists, getting leads, or anything else, blogs are a great way to get attention from the search engines and attract links to the site. Besides the website optimization benefits, blogs also provide a forum to communicate the company’s products and services. A blog provides a place for clients and/or people with similar interests of the company to dialog, and this dialog helps you grow and maintain a reputable site. Essentially, a blog can be an excellent tool to provide value to your visitors, show valuable content to the search engines, and promote your site for the keywords that are important to you.

To get started, there are really only two things you need to do. First, you’ll need to set up the blog, and set it up correctly. Second, you’ll need to start blogging!

Step 1: Set up Your Blog

Many organizations can get intimidated about setting up a blog on their site, and with good reason. Although getting a blog up and running on your site is fairly straightforward, you must spend some time choosing the right solution and installing and configuring the blog in a way that makes it most attractive to search engine spiders. Once the technical parts of the install are complete, you’ll need to develop a list of topics to cover in the blog. The topics can simply come from the company’s key products and services. Brainstorm within the company about what topics clients will be interested in. What are the common questions being asked about the company’s products and services? Why is the business better than other businesses in the same industry?

And always be thinking of how you can relate these topics to your core keyword target list. As the blog matures, topics will manifest themselves based on the feedback received. That feedback may even dictate new products or services. Logistically, you should make sure to link to your blog from your homepage, and you should make sure it’s set up on the same domain. A good tip is to use an RSS feed from your blog to show content from your blog on other parts of your site. Although there are a number of options out there for your blog solution, we like Wordpress for its search friendly configuration and add-on options.

Step 2: Start Blogging

Typically the hardest part about a blog is doing the writing itself and continuing it in a consistent manner. In order to have a successful blog, you absolutely need to be blogging! A company needs to recognize that the blog is important not only for the value it provides to its visitors, but also for providing search engines with keyword rich content that further describes your site. As your audience is two-fold, keep in mind that blog writing needs to be done in a way that supports both of these objectives. There are a number of ways to make sure that your blog gets written to consistently.

• It’s good to spread the responsibility of throughout the company. Have everyone in the company write a blog post once a day, once a week, or with whatever frequency they can support.
• Look to your local educational institutions for interns. Internships in technical writing can be an excellent way to ensure that your blog is kept up to date with fresh content.
• Have it done professionally. Outsourcing to companies that specialize in content generation can keep you on track with precisely calculated, keyword rich, search engine friendly blog posts, and you can have loads of content posted for you without taking a single minute out of your day.

Blogging is an absolutely essential part of your search marketing strategy, and the best time to get started was yesterday!

Find out how WebShare can help you set up, configure, and start populating your blog with valuable content. Contact us when you’re ready to take your search marketing strategy to the next level.

The mobile search market continues to attract more users. A recent study by Google researchers was featured in IEEE Computer Society’s Computer Magazine, and revealed some of the latest user trends in mobile search. Here are a few of the key findings from the study:

1. From 2005 to 2007 the number of mobile search queries resulting in users clicking at least one search result increased from 10 percent to over 50 percent. Furthermore, the percentage of mobile search queries resulting in users requesting “more search results” rose from 8.5 percent to 10.5 percent.
2. Since 2005, the number of queries per session has increased by more than 25 percent.
3. The average mobile query was 2.56 words and 16.8 characters, while smartphone queries were slightly longer at 2.64 words. In comparison, PC search queries are about 2.5 words.

The study also looked at what mobile users are searching. The table below is taken from the study which shows the top categories in mobile search. The results are based on actual query data from Google. The categories in the table are undefined, so it is difficult to determine exactly how the web pages were classified, but it offers an interesting look at what users are searching for on their mobile devices.

Whether your search marketing strategy targets natural (organic) searches or paid advertising, the addition of mobile-friendly web pages to your site is important. Note that mobile-friendly landing pages are required for pay-per-click advertising on Google’s mobile search engine. WebShare offers a variety of search and conversion marketing services that can help you improve your site’s presence in the mobile search market. You can expect to see more users searching the Mobile Web as wireless service providers continue to improve the speed of their wireless internet connections, making it increasingly more important to expand your search marketing strategy into the mobile arena.

Now that Google is moving away from a “monolithic” index, it’s common for people in different geographies to get completely different results from a Google search. So when discussing search results with a client or testing geo-targeted adwords, it’s often useful to have Google show me the results as if I were in a different area.

To accomplish this only requires a little manipulation of the query string parameters.

For example, a normal query for mangos might look like this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=mangos

Note that the “q=” query string parameter tells us what the search term is. With the region parameters for San Diego, California added on the end, it looks like this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=mangos&gl=US&gm=825&gr=US-CA&gcs=San%20Diego

The parameters are:

gl = Country code (full list here)
gll = Lat & Long
gr = Worldwide region code (full list here)
gcs = City (but gr must be set to the same value. Full list here)
gpc = Zip code (only works if country code is “US”)
gm = Metropolitan areas of US (full list here)

A handy trick is to let Google set them for you via their Adwords preview wizard . Simply go to:
www.google.com/adpreview

Specify the region and hit search. Then click on the frame properties on the bottom frame and copy the GL,GM,GR, & GCS params out of the URL and paste onto the end of your search.

If you’re interested in manipulating the other query string parameters Google uses, check out this handy cheatsheet.

Google recently introduced the Conversion Optimizer as a new tool for Google AdWords clients. The idea behind this tool is to manage one’s advertising costs around specific conversion goals. You still pay per click, but instead of setting cost per click (CPC) bids, you specify a maximum cost per acquisition (CPA) bid for each ad group. The Conversion Optimizer manages your CPC bids for you, making adjustments and showing your ads only when you’re likely to get conversions.

Using the Conversion Optimizer does have some requirements that you should be aware of before getting started. First you must have conversion tracking enabled for your campaign. Secondly the campaign must have at least 300 conversions in the last 30 days. These two requirements are essential for the tool to work properly, so if you don’t meet these then unfortunately Google does not allow you to use the Conversion Optimizer. You can set up the tool quite simply in your client center within the “Edit Campaign Settings” section under your “Bidding Options”. In addition, you need to be aware that the Conversion Optimizer does have limitations. There are several AdWords features that are not compatible with the new tool at this time. If you’re not willing to part with things like position preference, budget optimizer, site targeting, advanced ad scheduling, and preferred cost bidding, then the Conversion Optimizer isn’t for you (yet?). Lastly, campaigns that are using the Conversion Optimizer may not be modified using the AdWords Editor.

To find out more on your own about the new Conversion Optimizer please go to the AdWords Help Center.

WebShare is a Google AdWords Qualified Company and is ready to assist you with your Google AdWords Management. We have a great deal of experience in helping customers get the most out of their advertising budgets, and we offer options ranging from training programs to full service account management. Whether you’re starting from scratch or simply would like to learn how to use new tools such the Conversion Optimizer, Webshare has a plan for you.

Yesterday, America Online announced that it will be enacting a number of changes that will “position the company as the world’s largest and most effective advertising network.”

They’ll be doing this with what they call Platform A, an entity that, like Google Adwords, Yahoo!’s Search Marketing platform and Microsoft’s adCenter, will offer advertisers the chance to reach their potential customers through a network of web advertising. So is this any different? Or is AOL simply stepping up their efforts in the pay per click game? Well, first off, Google distributes paid links on AOL’s website and it’s Google technology that runs AOL’s search functionality. Google is also a 5% owner of AOL after its 2005 $1 billion investment. Platform A is not out to replace Adwords, but it will offer access to a whole new type of audience by leveraging already successful AOL advertising products.

According to comScore Media Metrix, Platform A is already reaching over 90% of the domestic online audience, and the platform is leveraging Advertising.com – the world’s largest network of third-party sites that are ready and willing to display ads. Additionally, AOL is bringing in some serious customer targeting features by integrating TACODA (a behavioral targeting company that AOL recently acquired). The platform will also buddy up with Third Screen Media (mobile media network), Lighteningcast (video ad serving) and ADTECH will round out the international ad serving.

We’ll be watching this one closely as it rolls out, and if you’re managing your pay per click advertising efforts, we suggest you do too!

So what, exactly, is the “long tail” and why is it important to search marketing? The concept was coined by Chris Anderson in a 2004 Wired magazine article and applied to merchandising, but this concept is particularly well suited for the world of search marketing.

You’ve got a few keywords that you know you want to rank for. They’re the ones you know bring in lots of traffic and the ones that you have to work hard to keep your rankings for. When we talk about the long tail for keywords, we’re talking about the hundreds or thousands of other keywords that people type into search engines every single day to find products and services just like yours.

Take a look at the graph above. This is a typical representation of the kind of daily traffic you might see that results from your keyword research, with the keywords broken out into tiers. It’s obvious that our Tier 1 keywords have the ability to generate the most traffic on our site, right? While it is true that individually, those keywords can bring in the most potential traffic, you also have to realize that you’re probably not the only one who knows about them. Competition is going to be fierce for these keywords…and take a look at your Tier 2 set. While none of these keywords alone has the ability to stack up to a Tier 1 keyword, collectively you can attract TWICE as much traffic from the Tier 2 set!

Now have a look at Tier 3. As the line moves rightward, it drops off steeply with a nearly flat long tail - hence, the term “long tail”. But these keywords hardly attract any traffic at all, why would we bother targeting them? Individually, that may be true, but collectively, these keywords represent 55% of the traffic available to your website. And your competitors probably don’t know about these or aren’t focusing on them, so they won’t be nearly as competitive to rank your pages for. An additional benefit is that these keywords are likely much more specific to your products and services, and have a high probability of generating extremely qualified, targeted traffic.

How an organization targets long tail keywords depends on the type of business, search marketing strategy and budget, but the important thing is that you do the research to find your long tail keywords and you actively target them. Webshare provides a variety of keyword research solutions to help you identify and harness the power of the long tail keywords in your industry.

And keep in mind that there are a number of attractive qualities in long tail keywords for paid search marketing campaigns as well as your organic efforts. Long tail keywords tend to be available for lower bid prices on the pay per click markets, and can often comprise a significant portion of an organization’s search marketing sales. Long tail keywords are a fantastic way to get a big “bang for the buck”, and are a great place to start when developing your search marketing strategy.

Nielsen / Netratings company reported that Google continues to lead the way as the search engine of choice for many users. The market research company also reported that Google has the highest retention of users. For at-home users, Google sees 79% of its users return, followed by Yahoo! at 69%, and MSN/Windows Live with 65%. The trend was similar for at-work users with slightly higher retention numbers. However, Nielsen / Netratings in the same article reported that search engine users are choosing more than one search engine for their search providing needs. In the big three, 84% of the MSN/Windows Live Search visitors went to either Google or Yahoo! or both as well as their usual MSN/Windows Live. 78% of Yahoo! and 63% of Google visitors went to the other engines as well.

What we should take from this data is that Google is clearly important to your search marketing plan – this is your classic 900 pound gorilla. But you should not forget about the other search engines unless you’re happy leaving potential traffic on the table. For example, when starting a pay per click campaign, there is nothing wrong with choosing Google’s Adwords to get a proof of concept. Since it has the highest amount of users, Google can give you an idea of whether or not your ad campaigns will be profitable. However, after your campaigns are proven, remember to consider expanding into Yahoo! Search Marketing and potentially Microsoft’s adCenter for access to more traffic. Spreading out to more than one search engine can often put you in a less competitive arena and will also help cover your business in the event users choose a different search engine from their typical choice. As the Nielsen / Netrating report shows, more users are searching more than one search engine these days.

It is important to pay attention to market research done by companies like Nielsen / Netratings to understand how to appropriately divide your search marketing efforts amongst the search providers. In the search marketing programs that we offer, we monitor and work towards results in Google, Yahoo!, and MSN / Windows Live, as well as a host of other paid and organic traffic sources. We work with our clients to help them understand the importance of diversity in supplying targeted visitors and how to appropriately budget to the different search engines, because as the Nielsen / Netratings report points out, the internet is becoming a very competitive place, and more of your potential customers are finding you from a more diverse range of sources than ever before.

For details of the Nielsen / Netratings report please see Top U.S. Web Sites Enjoy High Visitor Retention Rates, but Face Significant Audience Overlap with Competitors, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

Google announced that within the next few days, it will begin including ads on the Google Mobile Search pages as an extension to its Adwords program. Google is promoting this new service to its advertisers on the premise that it will help advertisers reach additional qualified customers. The ads will be displayed to users searching Google on their cell phones free of charge until November 18th, 2007. Beginning November 19th, however, Google will begin charging its advertisers for clicks on the mobile ads unless you tell them otherwise. The trial period is available to all Adwords account holders, which will allow them time to experiment with the mobile platform by reaching actual qualified customers.

We highly suggest that you take an extra close look at your Adwords metrics to see just how profitable these ads are for your business and then make an informed, data-driven decision on how to proceed with your campaigns come November 19th. If you’re taking advantage of our Google Adwords management services, rest assured we’ll be doing this with your accounts.

Google is using this opt-out approach versus an opt-in approach, making this an opportune time to review your Adwords accounts. All Adwords account holders should review their ads campaigns to ensure that the campaigns not benefiting from the new mobile ads are excluded from that network. Additionally, if you plan to use mobile results then you should ensure that your ads are targeted towards mobile users.

Adwords account holders should also be advised that their mobile ads should reflect a landing page that can viewed in a mobile browser. Google is reporting that they have seen an upward trend in mobile usage this past summer, making this an opportune time for Adwords account holders to reach a new section of potential consumers. As wireless internet becomes more widespread and mobile devices (such as the Apple iPhone) become more user-friendly for the internet, this is going to be an exciting area to watch.

Read more in Google’s Adwords Help Center…

This week we’ve rolled out a new service in response to the overwhelming need we’ve seen recently for a solid email marketing solution that allows for easy management, conversion testing, and perhaps most importantly, industry leading deliverability.

Frustrations with the management and legal aspects of opt-in list management are commonplace these days, and being able to perform A/B/N split testing or even

multivariate testing on your email blasts is becoming a necessity in the online marketing world. And once the mails are sent, keeping your email broadcasts out of the SPAM filters has become a problem that requires an entire department to manage.

We’re proud to offer our clients access to a system that can address all of these concerns and more – and has been helping businesses for more than 6 years and boasts over 10,000 users around the world. Depending upon your level of expertise or customization, we offer services from complete self-service email marketing to advanced services such as statistical experiment design and analysis of individual email broadcasts.

If you’re already doing email marketing, then you know that mailing lists, newsletters, email blasts, and customer communications can mean a big boost to your website’s ROI, and using professional hosting can help you make sure that you’re getting the most out of these efforts.

If you haven’t yet explored the powerful tool of email marketing, then what are you waiting for? You could be reaching your customer base and tapping into a fantastic

source of traffic and conversions for just pennies per email!

Find out more about WebShare’s email marketing solutions here and contact us when you’re ready to take your email marketing efforts to the next level.