Month: September 2008

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AdWords Ups the Ante

Google announced on the AdWords blog that they would be rolling out a number of changes and they are all happening this week.

First we saw on Monday the line next to the keyword that says something like you will need to pay $16 a click to be on the first page of results. It is interesting that some of the keywords that this phrase had been placed next to already showed an average placement of 1 to 3.

Next we saw on a number of account Tuesday and Wednesday a significant drop in ad position causing us to increase the CPC across the board and by keyword depending on the situation.

I have not yet seen a significant rise or drop in impressions yet in accounts. Some accounts I have started to notice that there is more activity on more keywords, but not across the board on all accounts.

Clearly Google is working to tweak AdWords.  To find out exactly what AdWords has announced, please visit this post on the AdWords blog.

In a nutshell here is what the changes are about:

  • Quality Score is now more accurate — because it is calculated at the time of each search query
  • Keywords are no longer marked ‘inactive for search‘ — all keywords are active because they are evaluated for every relevant query
  • ‘First page bid estimates’ replace ‘minimum bids’ in your account — providing a more actionable and useful metric to advertisers

    • Remember when Google recommends a budget or a cost per click this is called add-on selling. It does not mean that you need to act on the advice!

    Clearly from what we are seeing across many sectors there is an upwards price adjustment happening, but will this impact an account with more impressions and a lower CTR. It is all too new to know exactly, but one thing for sure is that CPC is moving up and strongly on some accounts.

     

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    The Best Time to Publish Your Blog Post for Readership

    When is the best time to publish your blog for readership? Are there best days? How about frequency? How many posts per week are best? Here are my tips based on long term blogging and our blog writing service business.

    Best Time to Publish

    With WordPress it is easy to write ahead and publish early to not miss readers who may subscribe through feeds and review your news every morning. For my blog, I post ahead and then publish before 7:00 AM on weekdays, typically on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday schedule. For our blog writers, our rule is post must be up the day it is due before noon Eastern Time.

    Are There Best Days to Publish?

    Sure, if you watch your website statistics and you are a typical service related business, the best days to publish are week days. For most service based businesses traffic will drop on weekends and blog readership will also drop for these businesses during those times too. For e-commerce sites, weekends are hot! From my experience Sunday is typically a soft day for most and Saturday more important. But make sure to check your website statistics as I have found the opposite true for some businesses with Saturday being flat and Sunday being big. For our blog customers and my own blog, I am not working on Saturday and Sunday and so you won’t find posts on my blog on the weekend or for our clients.

    What’s the Best Frequency for Blog Posts?

    From my experience, I like Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I have blogged five days a week for long periods and I have not seen an increase in readership, traffic, or organic placement. Some of our clients like blogging services five days a week, but I have not seen that moving to posts five days a week really makes a big difference for a blog other than to build up content and authority more quickly. But blog less than three times a week and your blog may flounder. If you post infrequently readers don’t follow you regularly, they just don’t think you are serious about your blog and their attention. My Yahoo will even fold up the RSS feed listing and state no new posts in the last 7 days – even if that is not exactly true if you are not on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday schedule. So for posting frequency, I like three posts but only as Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

    What’s Best For You?

    So what’s best for you and your blog. Leave me a note by clicking comments and share what works best for you and your blog.

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    Google Speaks Again on Duplicate Content

    The Google Search blog posted an excellent post today on duplicate content. If you are running an affiliate website this is a “must read” post for you.

    The synopsis is that one – there is no duplicate content penalty for duplicate content, but two – that Google works very hard to give the site with the most authority the full organic capital for the page that they have created. Google has become incredibly smart and with some of their new patents this past year on duplicate content identification, it is nearly impossible to scam them.

    What this means specifically for website owners is to not stress out over duplicate content such as print version pages of your website, but for affiliate sites, and spin-off topic websites, just don’t expect them to really be able to place organically. The parent site will place as it has the site authority as well as the original content ownership in Google’s eyes. This also means if other sites are scraping your content, they may be dinged in this brave new world.

    The take away from this Google post is that if you are using affiliate website content, better get a part-time job or keep your full-time job you may never be realistically able to get great organic website placement to be able to make a real living from an affiliate based marketing website.

    For website owners that are thinking of spinning of topical websites to get better placement on a particular service, don’t waste your time unless your content will all be unique and you will really work hard to get placement on your spin-off site. Your parent site will simply have more authority and content ownership and the spin-off site will always place lower. (I have actually tested this approach for over one year now and find it to be a truth.)

    So invest your time and money where it matters – your main website with great authoritative and unique content.

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    Your Subs Should Always Be First

    Take care of them and they will take care of you… that’s how it goes in the subcontracting world. If you subcontract out work to independent contractors make sure to treat them the way you want to be treated by your clients.

    One of the biggest gripes that subcontractors have is not being paid on time. So if you hire subs yourself make sure to pay them on time. Once you create a corral of dependable sub contractors you can focus on growing your business. In fact using sub contractors can dramatically grow your business while keeping your costs low and leveraging your profit. But if you don’t keep your sub contractors happy and have a revolving door of staff, you can eat up any profits with retraining and having to follow behind unqualified helpers.

    The key is to find excellent contractors, train them, and keep them. The longer a contractor stays with you, the more valuable they can become to your business. I’ve found these tips to keep subcontractors happy.

    1. Pay on time.
    2. Value their efforts.
    3. Give feedback and provide training.
    4. Be generous with your time on questions.
    5. Make sure you are paying a fair rate based on experience and effort.

    If you’re a sub contractor, what do you hate most. Here’s my short list.

    1. Not being paid on time
    2. No feedback given on my efforts
    3. No training provided.
    4. Ideas and suggestions for improvement in services never enacted.
    5. No contact with the decision makers in the main office on policy that impact my work.
    6. Not being paid a fair rate based on experience.

    If you have others leave them in the comments below I welcome you input.