Our founder, Justin Freid, recently dove into premium placements over on PPCHero. You can check out his post here: Premium Placements: Understanding Success Metrics.

PodCamp is a Barcamp-style community unconference for anyone interested in podcasting, blogging, video-casting and social media.  Held for the first time in Boston during the fall of 2006, the PodCamp events have spread across the globe to include 35 events in cities like Toronto, Berlin, New York, Cape Town, Stockholm and Pittsburgh.

The purpose of PodCamp is to:

• Share information.
• Build & develop relationships
• Grow the new media community

We’re pumped to be attending. Every year some of the brightest Philadelphia SEO and internet marketing company’s send their bestt to speak at the event and this year our Founder, Justin Freid, will be presenting a session on The Ultimate Guide To Paid Search. So if you are interested in internet marketing, podcasts, social media or any other digital channel check out PodCamp Philly and make sure to attend some of the great sessions!

Previously, mobile keywords were judged in the same fashion as keywords that target desktops and lab tops. This update takes into account if a you are sending a user to the mobile site or a standard website. You will be penalized if your mobile ads direct searchers to a standard site and not a mobile site.

Why Make The Change? 

This makes a lot of sense. Google’s goal is to provide the best user experience for their users, and sending someone to a site full of text and images on a mobile phone is not a quality user experience. Not to mention, from an account management perspective, it is a best practice to have a fully functional mobile site to direct traffic to.

This change reinforces some other best practices that SEM Managers should be using such as creating separate campaigns for the devices you are targeting and the network you are targeting as well. Time to really start riding your dev team to get the mobile site done!

AG Construction specializes in remodeling and renovating high end kitchen and bathrooms in the Philadelphia area. They specifically cater to the Center City Philadelphia market and have built some of the most beautiful bathrooms, kitchens, decks and patios in Old City, Northern Liberties, Rittenhouse and Society Hill. Altobello has a reputation for doing things right the first time and providing high end renovations at a reasonable price. For more infromation on their company please visit www.agcllc1.com

We’ll be making some changes to their website and SEM campaigns over the next few weeks so keep an eye out for them as they start climbing the rankings on Google and Bing!

If you happen to be using a tool such as ClickEquations, Kenshoo or Marin, you are already taking advantage of Google Adwords API capabilities. But to really get the most out of it, you can use it to create ads that display up to the minute statistics, savings or other important information in regards to your business.

What it does:

Google enables you to connect your text ads through API to a database where you can update items such as pricing, percentages, saving numbers or other things you would want to include within a text ad.

Why Use It?

It saves time, ad become more targeted and relevant and you can differentiate yourselves from competitors.

How it can be used: 

In many competitive markets, advertisers utilize different tactics in their text ads. Some display savings, prices and even the amount of the product left in inventory. This tactic can help increase your text ads CTR. But what about those who’s prices are frequently changing? It can be tedious to update ads for a large account.

For those in this position and for those who have access to development resources, you can connect your text ads to a database through Google Adwords API. Within this database you can hold different items you would like to keep in your text ads.

For example, lets say you manage an account that is in the electronics company and has frequent sales and discounts to attract customers. To edit all of the ads across all the products your client offers can take a very long time.

You could set up a database with a table that holds the current prices or discounts related with each specific product. You can then easily edit this table with new discount percentages or price numbers and have the API tool edits all of your ads.

If you happen to manage an account where rates change frequently depending on the time of the year or by state you can structure your campaigns accordingly and update the database to easily show your new rates.

Google Adword’s API tool can be extremely helpful and provide a competitive advantage over your competitors. If you happen to manage an account where this would fit, I would suggest working with your development team to create such an API.

There is another tool out there similar to the search query report that can be even more powerful. In order to find this report you will need to have Google Webmaster Tools installed on your site. Within Webmaster Tools, under the “Your Site On The Web” header there is a report entitled Search Query Report. This report takes the reports available in normal analytics to another level. As you can see in the screenshot below, on the right hand side you can green and red arrows indicating improvements or drop offs in rankings. Essentially this is showing you the momentum behind the keyword search phrase.

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

Positive Trending Keywords:

The keywords that show a positive change present an opportunity for you to rank for a term. Since Google has already deemed you favorable for that term, it is some low hanging fruit you can easily grab on to. By drafting anew post on that subject or a similar subject, you can add onto the momentum already built.

What you will need to do is assess the opportunity for each keyword. Based on your business model, so any of the keywords that have positive momentum provide you with an opportunity to get more sales or newsletter sign ups?

Negative Trending Keywords:

Looking at the keywords that are dropping in rank also can provide you with some insight and ideas. If you are seeing a drop for one of your more important keywords that may have performed well in the past you should dive deeper into why you are loosing your rankings. Creating additional content could help you regain your lost rankings.

Keeping an eye on this report is a great way to get the ideas flowing in your head when you have hit writers block.

Whoever thought that OutKast would provide us with such great SEO tips from their song ‘So Fresh and Clean.’ But if you listen carefully they are providing you with two essential tips to help your website achieve the rankings you are working towards.

Keep It Fresh

Fresh content is key. As Big Boi and Andree 3000 let you know – the fresher you are the more likely everybody will be watching you. And in the case of search engines, frequently producing fresh content can help you attract the eyes of search engine bots.

The more you update your blog or add additional pages to your site, the more you entice Google and Bing to crawl your site. With lots of fresh, quality content for your niche you can help your site be seen as an authority on a subject matter, thus boosting your rankings for targeted keywords.

Keep It Clean

Something that many business owners overlook is keeping your website clean. And when I say ‘clean’ that covers a few things.

Make It Easy For the Search Engines – Search engines are not people. They cannot easily tell what video or picture you posted on your website. They also don’t want to read 100 of HTML code and javascript before they get to the actual content on your page.

By properly using alt tags and placing content towards the top of your page, you can help the bots easily digest your content. Search engines also do not like errors. Errors send up a red flag, so making sure your site is free of any 404’s or 502’s is important.

Watch Your Back(links) – Shady links can lead to poor results. Google take a look at who you hang out with. Who is linking into you and who you are linking out to. Making sure your backlink profile is clean of any shady or very low quality links will keep you out of Google’s dog house.

Show Them The Way – A clean, clear and concise internal linking structure lets search engines know which pages are important on your site. When a bot arrives, it looks at the pages you link to from your homepage or the page it lands on and assigns a weight according to your linking structure. By creating a linking structure that promotes the pages you want people to land on, you can help Google and Bing send potential customers there.

Keeping your content fresh and your site clean and readable are some of the essential SEO 101 tips that can help any business get more out of their site. From now on anytime you hear ‘So Fresh and So Clean’ – go write a new blog posts and make sure there are no 404’s on your site.

What Are Communication Ad Extensions?

The AdWords Communication Ad Extensions are a new ad extension that allows AdWords advertisers to display communication means as part of a text ad, thus allowing users to submit their information to be contacted.

What Do Communication Ad Extensions Look Like on SERPs?

The ad extension is a small area that appears as an extra line after your second line of your text ad.

How Can This Ad Extension Help?

With communication ad extensions enabled, you can easily acquire leads right from the search engine results page. You can gather their information before they even get to your website. We all know you can waste a lot of money on bad clicks, this allows you to acquire the information you want, quickly without worrying about someone not liking the landing page you send your traffic too.

One of the other great factors of this program is it is currently free! Yes, for those select advertisers invited into the program, Google is offering the extension for free. Needless to say, when it is rolled out to the masses, Google will ad d some sort of cost onto the extension.

How Do You Receive The Data?

At this time, Google holds the data after the email or phone number is submitted through the extension. You can be sent the data in real time or in a mass excel sheet. This can be set up through your account management team.

How Could It Better?

While this is a great addition to the extensions available in Adwords, there are some improvements that could make it even better. For some lead generation campaigns, location is or zip code is the starting point of the conversion process. Being able to customize the field and what is entered into the ad extension would make this tool more powerful. For example, if I am selling home owners insurance the first thing  I need to provide a quote is the zip code. Getting that on the SERP and then providing a landing page that is pre-filled and custom to the zip code can help push the visitor through the conversion process.

In order to do just that there are a few things you should address before you start blogging:

Set Goals

First off – what are your goals? Why are you starting a blog? Is it to voice your opinion on a subject matter or to sell more products on your e-commerce site. The goals of your blog should be in line with your business model.

If you happen to starting a blog to voice your opinion on a subject, your goals should align with that model. A great goal for this type of blog would be to encourage users to sign up for an email newsletter or sign up for an RSS feed.

If you happen to running a e-commerce site your goal would obviously be driving more traffic and getting more sales. You will want to attract more traffic and attract users who are looking for your specific products. You can easily gear your blog to help you attract potential customes. Post testimonials or reviews of your products or services, create posts that preview upcoming innovations of your products or anything else that will get potential customers excited about your business.

How Will You Measure Success?

Figuring out how you will measure the success for your blog is important. You’ll need to measure success in order to understand how much time should be invested into it. There are quite a few ways to measure how well you blog is informing. Here are a few key once:

SEO Rankings:  When you publish fresh new content frequently, it can help you increase your organic rakings on search engines. Keep an eye on where you rank for the terms your business is targeting is a easy way to measure success.

Sales and Conversions: The goal of any business is to make money and blogging can help you do just that. Keeping track of how sales and conversion increase  as you blog can be an easy factor to understand.

Overall Traffic: Blog posts should be something that people come to your site to read, thus increasing overall traffic numbers. Looking at how people get to your site can also tell you quite a bit about how your blog is performing. If you are seeing many return visitors, chances are people are enjoying the posts you are publishing and are coming abck to your site looking for more. You also can take a look at what pages people are landing on when they reach your site from search engines. Are they landing directly on a blog post? If so, that means your posts are ranking well in search engines.

Interaction: One goal of any blog should be to encourage interaction with your customers and fans. Are they frequently leaving comments or sharing your posts on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Google+? Those are both key indicators of how your blog is doing.

Set Up Analytics

Part of measuring success is setting up a proper analytics package. If you are a small business you can easily set up a free Google Analytics package on your site. With this you will easily be able to understand how people are getting to your site and what they are doing when they get there.

Who Is You Audience?

Will you be blogging to industry professionals? Or will you be trying to attract new customers? Keeping this in mind before you start writing is extremely important. You will want to create a common theme through your blog posts so you target the right audience.

If you are trying to attract new customers to your reality business you do not want to produce content about ‘How To Sell A Home’. It would be wise to instead create blog posts related to new homes you have on the market or about the quality of the schools in the towns you sell homes in.

How Often Will You Post?

Keeping a schedule for how often you will be posting on your blog can help you in two ways – it makes you as the writer dedicated to a deadline. And it also gives your readers a reason to check back frequently. If they expect a new post every Monday morning, soon they will just automatically come to your site each and every morning.

The event was attended by business owners and marketing managers from companies in the Philadelphia area. We had a wide array of attendees from companies selling military tent equipment to clothes for women with hot flashes! And each one walked away with good idea of how blog can help their company and the skills needed to set up and maintain a blog.

Here is a short clip of the beginning of Justin’s presentation:

In this presentation Justin took the attendees through WordPress interface step by step and showed them how to create posts, pages and gave some great SEO tips. For more information about the CCPA you can visit their site.

There were also some great presentation by Audrey Juliene, of RDE Marketing, Jeff Gibbard of True Voice Media and Meredith of Meridith Communications.