Copyright by Axandra.com
Web site promotion software

 

With all the hype about Google's latest algorithm updates, it is easy to forget about the basics that are needed to get high rankings. Before you work on the links to your site, your web page basics must be right.

For example, the title tag has a very big influence on the search engine positions of a web page. In addition, the title tag is very important because it is the first thing that people see in the search results. There are several things that you can do to optimize your web page titles.

Step 1: check the HTML code of your web pages

It's astonishing how many pages have more than one title tag in the code. If your pages have more than one title tag, they will confuse search engine robots. The tags might not be read at all or, even worse, search engines might interpret this as a spamming attempt.

You can check the HTML code of your web pages with the HTML validator in IBP.

Step 2: use your keywords in your web page titles

Use the most relevant keywords at the beginning of your web page titles. Many people only scan the beginning of the titles so make sure that the beginning of the title tag contains the right words.

Step 3: make the titles clear, predictable and irresistible

The readers of your web page titles should know what your web page is about and the title should lead to a page that meets the expectations of the searcher.

The web page title is the first thing that people see in the search results. Make sure that the wording of your web page titles is appealing, emotional and irresistible.

Step 4: keep the titles short

Although there is no official limit, you should keep the length of your web page titles below 70 characters. The reason for that is that most search engines truncate the titles after 65-70 characters on the search result pages.

Step 5: remove unnecessary words

Words such as "homepage", "Index" and your company name usually don't help your search engine rankings. Remove these words from the title tags of your web pages. Your title tags will become more relevant to the actual keywords then.

Step 6: use unique title tags

Don't use the same title tags on more than one page. Each page should have a unique title tag that reflects the content of the web page. In general, optimize different pages of your website for different keywords. The more pages of your website you optimize the better.

The title tags of your web pages are only one factor that influences the position of your web pages in Google's search results. Analyze your web pages with IBP's Top 10 Optimizer to get a detailed analysis of all factors that influence the position of your pages on Google.

 

 

Copyright by Axandra.com
Web site promotion software

 

by Angie Dzwonkiewicz

 

There is a lot of information out there emphasizing process and tools that will help your business con­vert more visitors to qualified leads. Content marketing seems to be an afterthought. I don’t think it can be said enough how important good content is to your entire digital marketing strategy. Specific to lead management optimization, content is at the core.

It’s doesn’t do much good to go through the process of capturing contact information, setting up a lead management tool, and creating a prospecting process if you don’t have valuable content to sup­port the system.

There are two fundamental elements of content marketing that must be considered if your lead man­agement strategy is going to be successful.

• Identify with your audience. What subjects and information will interest your audience and keep them engaged? What insight are they looking for to address their business needs? Audit your existing content inventory, conversion sources and engagement metrics, or ask your sales team to help answer these questions and determine your content requirements.
• Align content marketing to your buying cycle. In complex purchase decision cycles your prospects require information at multiple touch points. They can have several interactions with your business before being ready to talk sales. Mapping your content to each stage in the buy­ing cycle will clarify how to approach the messaging and keep the conversation alive as your prospects move from awareness to purchase.

Quick tips to help you get started:

 

• Build a content roadmap that will allow you to plan ahead and align to multiple touch points.
• Leverage in-house expertise to ensure your content pieces are compelling.
• Build templates that have the user in mind – easy to read, easy to share and captures the infor­mation effectively.
• Start small, try creating one or two pieces for each stage in your lead management funnel and test them before expanding.

A well-executed content marketing strategy will increase brand recognition and reach, keep your product/solution top of mind, and increase the number of leads that are ready to do business.


Biography / Resume : Angie is the Senior Manager of Direct Marketing at Mediative, responsible for lead generation strategy and optimizing the direct marketing mix to maximize new business growth. She leads the company's content marketing initiatives with the goal of increasing thought leadership visibility within the digital marketing industry. With a background in search engine marketing, email marketing, and data analysis, Angie brings invaluable knowledge of performance-based marketing to her position at Mediative. Her commitment to delivering effective campaign results and building a strong framework for direct marketing execution has contributed to the success of Mediative's marketing objectives. Angie loves the energy and excitement of working in a fast-paced and challenging industry.

Miami Beach, FL -- Internet is full of websites that offer their visitors to check Google rankings for free, and many people reported that a lot of those tools are not reliable nor provide accurate information. Experts say that it is always the best option to use a couple of tools to check Google rankings and be 100% sure that an SEO campaign is heading towards success, and not wasting time.

SEO Miracle is one of the leading SEO companies in the United States that is constantly available to its customers. At SEO Miracles, they go above and beyond for their clients by offering not only reliable and fast SEO services, but also a complex system which helps in reporting client about the client’s SEO work.

SEO Miracle recently released a Google rank checker and decided to offer a reliable tool that will allow people to check Google rankings freely. Many of big business owners spend a large amount of money on promoting their businesses online, considering it to be an important investment, and desperately needed one. This way they can make a part of the SEO campaign and be aware of each step of the campaign by monitoring their website rankings.

Joshua Hood, CEO and a co-founder of SEO Miracle, has a number of theories why people should use the Google rank checker, “People pay a lot of money for SEO services and let’s even forget about the fact that they often end up with wrong people, and try to reach success by simply trusting other people’s estimations. SEO Miracle decided to offer a reliable solution for checking Google rankings, and now the Google rank checker is among top 10 tools for checking Google rankings. It is a great recognition and an indication of our hard work and a true desire to help people in ranking on the first page of Google.”

SEO Miracle announced to push their Google rank checker tool even further up the list and increase a number of users which according to Joshua Hood, will not be that difficult.

If you would like to visit SEO Miracle’s website and see what they have prepared for their clients, go to http://www.seomiracle.com or call their office phone at 305-432-2350.

 

 

Source: PRWeb

URL: Source

 

by Gord Hotchkiss

 

There’s a chicken and an egg paradox in mobile marketing. Many mobile sites sit moldering in the online wilderness, attracting few to no visitors. The same could be said for many elaborate online cus­tomer portals, social media outposts or online communities. Somebody went to the trouble to build them, but no one came. Why?

Well, it could be because no one thinks to go to the trouble to look for them, just like no one expects to find a ball diamond in the middle of an Iowa cornfield. It wasn’t until the ghosts of 8 Chicago White Sox players, banned for life from playing the game they loved, started playing on the “Field of Dreams” that anyone bothered to drive to Ray Kinsella’s farm. There was suddenly a reason to go.

The problem with many out-of –the-way online destinations is that there is no good reason to go. And, because of this, we make two assumptions:

- If there is no good reason for a destination to exist, then the destination probably doesn’t exist; or,

- If it does exist, it will be a waste of time and energy

If we jump to either of these two conclusions, we don’t bother looking for the destination. We won’t make the investment required to explore and evaluate. You see, there is a built in mechanism that makes a “Build it and they will come” strategy a risky bet.

This built in mechanism comes from behavioral ecology and is called the “marginal value theorem.” It was first identified by Eric Charnov in 1976 and has since been borrowed to explain behaviors in online information foraging by Peter Pirolli, amongst others. The idea behind it is simple – We will only invest the time and effort to find a new “patch” of online information if we think it’s better than “patches” we already know exist and are easy to navigate to. In other words, we’re pretty lazy and won’t make any unnecessary trips.

This cost/benefit calculation is done largely at a subconscious level and will dictate our online behav­iors. It’s not as if we make a conscious decision not to look for new mobile sites or social destina­tions. But unbeknownst to us, our brain is already passing value judgments that will tend to keep us going down well-worn paths. So, if we are looking for information or functionality that would be unlikely to find in a mobile site or app, but we know of a website that has just what we’re looking for and time is not a urgent matter, we’ll wait until we’re in front of our regular computer to do the research. We automatically disqualify the mobile opportunity because our “marginal value” threshold has not been met.

The same is true for social sites. If we believe that there is a compelling reason to seek out a Face­book page (promotional offers, information not available elsewhere) then we’ll go to the trouble to track it down. Otherwise, we’ll stick to destinations we know.

I believe the marginal value theorem plays an important role is defining the scope of our online worlds. We only explore new territory when we feel our needs won’t be met by destinations we already know and are comfortable with. And if we rule out entire categories of content or functionality as being unlikely to adapt well to a mobile or social environment (B2B research in complex sales scenarios being one example) then we won’t go to the trouble to look for them.

I should finish off by saying that this is a moving target. Once there is enough critical mass in new online territory to reset visitor expectations, you’ve increased the “richness” of the patch to the point where the “marginal value” conditions are met and the brain decides it’s worth a small investment of time and energy.

In other words, if Shoeless Joe Jackson, Chick Gandil, Eddie Cicotte, Lefty Williams, Happy Felsch, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver and Fred McMullin all start playing baseball in a cornfield, than it’s probably worth hopping on the tractor and head’n over to the Kinsella place!

Originally published in Mediapost’s Search Insider May 3, 2012



Biography / Resume : Gord Hotchkiss is the founder and senior vice president of Enquiro, now part of Mediative. He is renowned in the industry for his expertise when it comes to understanding online user and search behaviour. He and the Enquiro team have built a solid reputation for being the leading experts when it comes to understanding what happens on a search portal and why. Before Enquiro, Gord was chairman and director of SEMPO (The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization), he worked as a columnist for MediaPost and Search Engine Land, and he was a regular speaker at industry conferences and events. Gord is also the author of The BuyerSphere Project: How Business Buys from Business in a digital marketplace.

 

 

Austin, TX - May 09, 2012 -- Pubcon Las Vegas 2012, the premier social media and optimization conference, is pleased to announce an astounding new lineup of speakers for our popular Pubcon Masters Group intensive training program, featuring four premium tracks dedicated to pay-per-click (PPC) and landing page optimization, social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and in-house SEO.

Pubcon's Masters Group is a popular limited-attendance educational training program that features an intensive full day of industry-leading social media, PPC, in-house search, and SEO learning from top instructors.

The next Pubcon Masters Groups meets on Monday, October 15 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the day before the full Pubcon Las Vegas 2012 conference begins. The Pubcon Masters group is a separate event from the conference and is only available to those who reserve a space and purchase a stand-alone training day pass or the Pubcon Platinum pass.

All previous Pubcon Masters Group training programs have sold out well in advance, so avoid disappointment and reserve your spot now for this exceptional four-track day of intimate training with some of the world's best search, PPC, landing page, social media and in-house innovators.

CNN.com search engine optimization (SEO) coordinator Topher Kohan, Atlanta Journal-Constitution SEO manager Allison Fabella, Digitas senior vice president of search strategy Melanie Mitchell, and Microsoft senior SEO architect Derrick Wheeler will lead the Pubcon Masters Group in-house training program during Pubcon Las Vegas the week of October 15 - 19, 2012 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Our new pay-per-click (PPC) Pubcon Masters Group agenda features Internet marketing strategy guru and bestselling author Jeffrey Eisenberg, noted marketing optimization expert and bestselling author and columnist Bryan Eisenberg, bgTheory.com founder and popular Pubcon speaker Brad Geddes.

Our new Pubcon Masters Group social media marketing track will feature workshops on Facebook and Twitter advertising optimization and marketing and other social media subjects, with HubSpot.com's self-proclaimed viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella, BlitzLocal chief executive and Facebook marketing expert Dennis Yu, AlisonZarrella.com interactive copywriter and social media consultant Alison Zarrella, and Jabez LeBret, director of marketing at Get Noticed Get Found.

Our Pubcon Masters Group organic SEO track will feature intensive day-long educational workshops featuring Trackur chief executive Andy Beal, Joe Laratro, president of Tandem Interactive, MarketMotive.com SEO faculty chair Todd Malicoat, and Michael Gray, president of Atlas Web Service.

Kicking off the Pubcon Masters Group training program will be longtime search SEO industry leader Greg Boser, president of BlueGlass Interactive.

Pubcon Masters Group registration and conference information is available at http://www.pubcon.com.

About Pubcon
Pubcon is a multi-track educational conference hosted by WebmasterWorld. Pubcon, supported by the industry's leading businesses, speakers, exhibitors, and sponsors involved in social media, Internet marketing, search engines, and online advertising, offers an in-depth look at the future of technology presented by the world's top speakers in provocative cutting-edge sessions.

For more information about the conference, contact Brett Tabke at 512-231-8107 or brett at webmasterworld.com.

In the U.K., contact Neil Marshall at 512-231-8107 ext 106 or engine at webmasterworld.com.

For more details about sponsorship and exhibition opportunities, contact Strategic Marketing Director Joseph Morin at 512-231-8107 ext 104 or joe at webmasterworld.com.

 

 

Source: PRWeb

URL: Source

 

Copyright by Axandra.com
Web site promotion software

Google has announced that they made 52 changes in April. Which of these changes are relevant to your website rankings and how do you have to react to these changes?

What has happened?
 
Every month, Google publishes the changes that they made during the last month. This April, Google made 52 changes. Not all of these changes are relevant to the rankings of your web pages.
 
Some of the changes dramatically changed the way Google ranks web pages on the search result pages.
 
Which changes are relevant to your web page rankings?
 
The following changes have the biggest impact on the position of your web pages on Google's search result pages:
 

• Improvements to how search terms are scored in ranking. One of the most fundamental signals used in search is whether and how your search terms appear on the pages you’re searching. This change improves the way those terms are scored.
• Keyword stuffing classifier improvement. We have classifiers designed to detect when a website is keyword stuffing. This change made the keyword stuffing classifier better. 
• More authoritative results. We’ve tweaked a signal we use to surface more authoritative content. 
• More domain diversity. Sometimes search returns too many results from the same domain. This change helps surface content from a more diverse set of domains.

 
These first two items probably refer to the Penguin and Panda updates that Google released last month.  
 
Other items in the update list referred to sitelinks. Some search results might get two layers of sitelinks instead of a text snippet. Google also updated the algorithm for local searches and the way titles are displayed for some pages.
 
How do you have to adjust your web pages?
 
If you want to get high rankings on Google, you have to make sure that your pages offer what Google's latest algorithm requires. The Top 10 Optimizer in IBP can help you to analyze your web pages for Google's latest algorithm.
 
The Top 10 Optimizer in IBP is based on the analysis of Google's current top 10 results and it always tells you how to get high rankings with Google's latest algorithm.
 
The optimization method that is used by IBP makes sure that IBP always works with Google's current algorithm. You will get detailed advice that will make sure that your web pages get high rankings on Google.
 
People who think that SEO is the same as spamming will have a hard time with Google's new algorithms. People who use white-hat SEO methods will benefit from Google's changes.


Copyright by Axandra.com
Web site promotion software

 

Austin, TX - May 07, 2012 -- Pubcon Las Vegas 2012, the premier social media and optimization conference, is thrilled to announce a strong lineup featuring some of the world's best organic search engine optimization (SEO) leaders for a full track of the popular Pubcon Masters Group intensive training program

The Pubcon Masters Group organic SEO track will feature intensive day-long educational workshops featuring Trackur chief executive Andy Beal, Joe Laratro, president of Tandem Interactive, MarketMotive.com SEO faculty chair Todd Malicoat, and Michael Gray, president of Atlas Web Service.

The next Pubcon Masters Group takes place on Monday, October 15 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the day before the full Pubcon Las Vegas 2012 conference begins. The Pubcon Masters group is a separate event from the conference and is available only to those who reserve a space and purchase a stand-alone training day pass or the Pubcon Platinum pass.

Popular Pubcon speaker Beal is an internationally-renowned consultant, author, and speaker specializing in online reputation management and Internet marketing. Considered one of the world’s most respected reputation management experts, Beal has worked with many brand-leaders including Motorola, GlaxoSmithKline, Lowes, and NBC. His advice is trusted by ABC News, BusinessWeek, Inc. magazine, USA Today, and Forbes, among others. Beal’s current projects include his book “Radically Transparent: Monitoring & Managing Reputations Online,” his blog Marketing Pilgrim, GuestComment and Trackur’s various social media monitoring tools.

Laratro has a background rich in online marketing experience and a technical background dating back to the mid 1980s when he ran a bulletin board system (BBS) out of his parents' house while in middle school. Laratro is a recognized and leading expert in the search engine marketing industry and currently sits on the advisory board for Pubcon and serves as the president for the South Florida Interactive Marketing Association (SFIMA). Laratro will bring his unique cutting-edge organic SEO vision and business strategy to the Pubcon Masters Group training program.

Malicoat brings more than a decade of Internet marketing experience to the Pubcon Masters Group, along with over five years experience as a leading executive-level search marketing management consultant. Malicoat's skills have helped many large firms including Public Broadcasting Service (PBS.org), Meredith Corporation, Thomas Industrial, Rasmussen College, Real Networks, and other large brands. He has been cited by Inc. magazine, The Sydney Herald, Website Magazine, The New York Post, Infoworld, and many other media outlets for his expertise on search, reputation management, social media, and other Web-related issues.

Gray, a long-time Pubcon favorite, became involved in Web development and website management in 1998. Gray was webmaster for a major specialty retailer, helping create their website presence and growing their online sales from less than $10,000 a month to over $25 million in annual Web sales. Gray has been involved with affiliate marketing campaigns for several years, does consulting work on a variety of topics such as SEO, social media and blog management, and has been interviewed for SEO articles with CNET and Forbes.com.

Register today and take advantage of a great opportunity to join top optimization thought leaders Beal, Laratro, Malicoat, Gray for the Pubcon Masters Group training program organic SEO track.

The Pubcon Masters Group training program is a well-attended exclusive add-on opportunity separate from the Pubcon conference, offering a complete day of highly focused and personal learning from major organic SEO industry leaders.

Only a limited number of seats are available for the Pubcon Masters Group training program, and during each previous event it has sold out early. Reserve a place now for Pubcon's all-new Masters Group training program featuring the top pay-per-click (PPC), in-house, social media and optimization innovators.

Pubcon Masters Group registration and conference information is available at http://www.pubcon.com.

About Pubcon
Pubcon is a multi-track educational conference hosted by WebmasterWorld. Pubcon, supported by the industry's leading businesses, speakers, exhibitors, and sponsors involved in social media, Internet marketing, search engines, and online advertising, offers an in-depth look at the future of technology presented by the world's top speakers in provocative cutting-edge sessions.

For more information about the conference, contact Brett Tabke at 512-231-8107 or brett at webmasterworld.com.

In the U.K., contact Neil Marshall at 512-231-8107 ext 106 or engine at webmasterworld.com.

For more details about sponsorship and exhibition opportunities, contact Strategic Marketing Director Joseph Morin at 512-231-8107 ext 104 or Joe at webmasterworld.com.

 

 

Source: PRWeb

URL: Source

 

by Ian Everdell

 

Mother’s Day, one of the largest gift-giving events of the year, presents an opportunity to optimize your website and take advantage of the spike in online sales.

According to a study by the National Retail Federation:

 

 

Online retailers of these products can expect to see a large increase in website traffic in the week leading up to Mother’s Day compared to any other week of the year. A recent survey by PriceGrab­ber, a part of Experian, reported that 52% of people planned to buy their Mother’s Day gifts online this year – help make it easy for them to buy, and attract new customers who are ready to spend!

These 15 tips will help you to optimize your site to take advantage of Mother’s Day and to be more prominent in the search engine results, ultimately maximizing your online revenues.

1. Review metrics from the same time last year - Take a look at your analytics data from last year. What were your top referring sites and keywords? Which were the best converting? Which pages performed well (bounce rate, conversions, etc.)? Which performed poorly? Use this knowledge to target marketing messages and/or prioritize what parts of your site to tackle first.

2. Fix the Obvious - Do a crawl of your site or use webmaster tools to check for 404 errors and bro­ken links. Fix them. Make sure that you’re ready for 404 errors to happen by having a good 404 page.

3. Tailor Your Value Proposition– PriceGrabber’s survey reports that the respondents’ reasons for shopping online include free shipping (53%), price cuts (43%) and coupons (35%). Shopping online also lets your customers save time, save gas, avoid the parking lot, avoid lines, find hard-to-find items, use gift finders, wish lists, and guided selling. Incorporate this type of messaging into your site, and make it prominent.

4. Promote “Desire Paths” - Most people want to get from point A to point B as quickly as possi­ble. Help get them there by using promotional areas devoted to Mother’s Day features and/or develop a special Mother’s Day navigation menu. The example below shows 1–800-Flower’s home page with 5 navigational elements to get to the Mother’s Day Gift Guide.

 

 

 

 

 

5. Personalization - If you have personalization capabilities, use them! Target customers based on whether they’re new or returning, what they’ve purchased previously, where they live, and anything else you know about them.

6. Service Messaging - Online shoppers are naturally risk averse — they want to make sure they’re making the right decision. Help them answer their service questions by including easy and obvious content about or links to payment options, return policies, shipping policies, and inven­tory updates. More importantly, make sure that they can get help if they need it. Live chat and/or obvi­ous contact phone numbers should be available on every single page of your site.

7. Clicks to Bricks - If you have bricks-and-mortar locations, make your store finder obvious. And if you have ship-to-store capabilities, make sure that customers know that’s an option.

8. Product Badging - Help customers identify new items, sale items, great gift ideas (“Great for Mom!”), popular items, free shipping items, and top rated items by using product badging.

9. The Clock is Ticking - Include time-based messaging so that customers know when the cut-off date is for shipping and when specific deals or promos expire.

10. Promote Gift Cards – Pricegrabber reports that 22% of consumers plan to purchase gift cards for Mother’s Day this year. Use a promotional area to make it obvious to customers that they can eas­ily purchase and send gift cards.

11. Add Mother’s Day Messaging to Your Meta Data - Update your title tags and meta descrip­tions to include Mother’s Day messaging. This can help you stand out in search results and poten­tially rank better for Mother’s Day-related search terms.

12. Take Advantage of All Sales Channels - If you’re not using Google Product Search, Bing Shop­ping, Amazon Marketplace, Nextag, and so on, now might be a good time to check out those shop­ping feeds. If you are using them already, make sure that your feeds are updated daily with the latest product information.

13. Optimize Your Checkout Process - There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing the number of people who abandon their cart halfway through the checkout process. Reduce the risk involved by ensuring that they’ve been exposed to clear messaging about pricing throughout the process, includ­ing price guarantees, shipping and return policies, taxes and fees etc.

See Mediative’s Cheat Sheet “9 Tips for Optimizing your eCommerce Shopping Cart” for more tips to reduce shopping cart abandonment.

14. Check Your Mobile Experience – The National Retail Federation reports that 25.4% of people surveyed who owned a smartphone planned on using it to research products or compare prices, and 12.4% planned on purchasing products. Is your mobile experience ready for that?

15. Test! - Run some A/B tests. You can try Mother’s Day vs. regular messaging, specific promos on different pages/ site sections, time-based messaging, geotargeting, specific customer segments, and so much more to see what gets you the best ROI.

 

 

Biography / Resume : Ian is the Manager of User Experience & Research at Mediative, helping clients optimize the online experience for their potential customers. He manages several key accounts and leads the company’s ongoing research projects to better understand search, buyer behaviour, mobile, and user experience. With a background in neuroscience, web design and eye tracking, Ian brings an invaluable knowledge of human behaviour and human-computer interaction to his position at Mediative. He plays a key role in many of the company’s SEO projects and lends his expertise to the strategy development of both PPC and display advertising projects. Ultimately, Ian believes that success in digital marketing comes down to two things: being found and being good. So he works with clients to make sure they tick both boxes and establish a successful and lasting presence online.

 

by Darlene Moore
http://www.mediative.ca

A com­mon mis­take in a Google AdWords cam­paign is to not make use of the avail­able match types. Using dif­fer­ent match types can help in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of addi­tional key­words, increase Click Through Rate CTR, increase Qual­ity Score QS and decrease cost.

What is broad match you ask? Broad match is one of three match types (not includ­ing neg­a­tive key­words, which I will dis­cuss in Part 2) that Google offers when adding key­words to your paid search adver­tis­ing cam­paign. The match types are:

• Exact
• Phrase
• Broad
• Mod­i­fied broad

Exact Match Type

Exact match type refers to a key­word set­ting that allows your ad to show only when some­one searches for the exact phrase of your key­word. The exact match key­word “GPS soft­ware” will cause your ad to show only if some­one searches for “GPS soft­ware” or “soft­ware GPS” exactly, with no addi­tional words in the query.

Exact match is good for high vol­ume key­words but is not rec­om­mended exclu­sively in an account as it is too restric­tive. An adver­tiser would have to think of all the pos­si­ble vari­a­tions of a key­word – a daunt­ing task given that 20–25% of Google searches every sin­gle day are brand new.

Phrase Match

Phrase match refers to a key­word set­ting that allows your ad to show only when someone’s query includes all of the key­words in your phrase and pos­si­bly addi­tional words as well. The phrase match key­word “GPS soft­ware” can cause your ad to show if some­one searches for “win­dows GPS soft­ware” or “Android GPS soft­ware” for example.

Using phrase match, while def­i­nitely rec­om­mended, requires some fol­low up work to review the actual key­words that searchers used and to be sure these key­words are rel­e­vant. For exam­ple, if your site has GPS soft­ware, but not reviews of such soft­ware, you may not want to pay for traf­fic that is search­ing for “GPS soft­ware reviews” since they may be less likely to convert.

The com­bi­na­tion of phrase match and exact match are the min­i­mum match types that one should use in a PPC account.

Broad Match

Broad match refers to a key­word set­ting that allows your ad to show as a match to search queries that Google deems to be rel­e­vant vari­a­tions of your key­words such as syn­onyms, singular/plural forms, rel­e­vant vari­ants of your key­words, and phrases con­tain­ing your keywords.

Google’s idea of rel­e­vant may be dif­fer­ent than yours. For exam­ple I have recently seen Google serve up a housekeeper’s ad for the search query “naked house clean­ing”. Eek!

That doesn’t mean that broad match should not be used, just that it should be used care­fully and like phrase match, requires addi­tional fol­low up using the Search Query Report, to under­stand which key­words searchers have actu­ally used. These addi­tional key­words can then be used to cre­ate neg­a­tive key­words (which we will dis­cuss in part 2) or can be added to the account in phrase or exact match settings.

+Mod­i­fied +Broad Match

Mod­i­fied broad match is newer than the pre­vi­ous three match types and pro­vides more con­trol over broad match. Think of broad match with manda­tory key­words. You mod­ify the key­word by putting a plus sym­bol (+) directly in front of one or more words in a broad match key­word. Each word pre­ceded by a + must appear in the user’s search exactly or as a close variant.

Close vari­ants include mis­spellings, singular/plural forms, abbre­vi­a­tions and acronyms, and stemming’s (like “floor” and “flooring”).

Not con­sid­ered close vari­ants are syn­onyms (like “quick” and “fast”) and related searches (like “flow­ers” and “tulips”). The broad match mod­i­fier pro­vides greater reach than phrase match because it allows for addi­tional word(s) to be before, between, or after the key­word that has been mod­i­fied with the (+) sign.

Improv­ing exact match and phrase match

As of mid May 2012 Google will be “mak­ing improve­ments” to exact and phrase match so that your ad will be eli­gi­ble to dis­play when peo­ple search for close vari­ants of your key­words such as mis­spellings, sin­gu­lar and plural forms, acronyms, stem­ming, abbre­vi­a­tions and accents.

This means that “GPS soft­ware” as an exact match will now also show for the search term “GPS soft­wares” and “global posi­tion­ing sys­tem software”.

When this fea­ture goes live in Mid May, by default AdWords accounts will show your ads for close vari­ants of your key­words. You can restrict your exact and phrase match tar­get­ing for both exist­ing and new cam­paigns by going to the Cam­paigns Tab, select­ing the campaign(s) for which you’d like to change the match­ing options, then click­ing on the Set­tings Tab and scrolling to the Advanced Set­tings section.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of A Refresher In Max­i­miz­ing PPC Adver­tis­ing where I will dis­cuss neg­a­tive keywords.



Biography / Resume : Darlene has been doing SEO and PPC for over 10 years. She has worked with B2B and B2C clients in both North America and Europe who desire to increase their visibility within the search engines and achieve greater success with their PPC advertising campaigns. A recognized speaker and trainer in Ottawa, ON Canada, Darlene has delivered training on the subjects of search engine optimization and writing for the web, and has also taught web-based courses through the International Webmasters Association. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Carleton University (Canada) and an Honours Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology from the University of Ottawa (Canada).