June 2008 | Page 4 of 7 | The Web Authority

June 17, 2008June 14, 2008

Sign Up For Our Free Video Conference on Effective Blogging

I am doing a free video teleconference this month and have spots left for 14 people. If you are interested in participating to learn how to be an effective blogger on Monday June 23rd at 7:00 PM Eastern Time please send me an email to receive an invitation at webmaster@mccordweb.com.

I will be using an online conference center and Acrobat Connect, you will be able to watch and also phone in to hear the conversation. These are the topics we’ll discuss:

How to find blog content
How to write a great title
What’s the right size for a blog post
What is keyword density and how do you create it
Should you link out from your blog
What to do about comments
Question and Answers

The teleconference is expected to last 30 minutes. Please note that the phone in teleconference number is not toll free. You may choose to just listen or to listen and be in front of your computer to see the slides and information.

I’ll be doing other free seminars in the future, if you have a topic that you would like to have discussed, just drop me a note at info@mccordweb.com and let me know and I’ll put you on the advance notice for the event.

My events are small in nature to allow you an opportunity to participate and ask questions. You are always welcome to just listen or to listen and share.

June 16, 2008March 4, 2012

Bleeding Cash With Google AdWords

I see this too frequently to think of it as a fluke; clients using extremely general keywords for programs and then spending their whole budget on a term like gas or American sound. Wow, Google is really getting rich at the expense of some clients who are tickled to death at the volume of totally untargeted clicks they are getting.

I have now seen two clients in less than seven days who were spending $100 to $175 per day and did not have website statistics or AdWords conversion tracking set up! If you are going to spend serious money on AdWords, you must make Google accountable by having metrics to determine the program’s success in place. You should be using Urchin or at the minimum Google Analytics – AWStats doesn’t cut it! You should have conversion tracking installed and a scripted contact form that has a thank you page (not a return to the same form page) so that you can install the AdWords script in the code of the thank you page to be able to track micro-conversions or completions of your lead form.

Google AdWords can really work for some businesses, but you need to be a smart consumer or Google will allow you to spend and spend and spend and spend without any conscience of your real success or lack thereof.

June 14, 2008June 14, 2008

Jeremy Zawodny Leaves Yahoo and So The Exodus Starts

If you don’t know who Jeremy Zawodny is, he is Yahoo’s mouthpiece to the professional world of webmasters much in the sense that Matt Cutts is for Google. Jeremy is a search engineer and Yahoo uses him to disseminate information and his blog allows professionals such as myself to get an inside picture on what is happening with Yahoo.

Well, it is news that he is leaving Yahoo after 8 years. I didn’t expect otherwise. His blog has been very somber lately and he had written recently in angst about the Microsoft Yahoo bid. After having been in the corporate world myself and having a top management change affect my job drastically, sometimes quality people need to jump ship before new management puts the hammer down and squelches their creativity or changes the corporate culture to an unworkable model where they are no longer welcome. Clearly such is the case for Jeremy.

With all the changes Yahoo has experienced in the last several months, it is very hard to think that it is really business as us usual. I expect there will be other high level team members that will take their own exodus in the weeks to come leaving Yahoo ripe for the picking. Microsoft would be very foolish to not be looking carefully at acquisition of Yahoo.