Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. Millions of Internet users and entrepreneurs already oppose SOPA and PIPA.

The Senate will begin voting on January 24th. Please let them know how you feel. Sign this petition urging Congress to vote NO on PIPA and SOPA before it is too late.

Sign the petition here…

Making a report from scratch is not so much of an issue. However, recreating a report that you need might. Some data formats have changed (the month field for example) and the method you go about adding fields to the reports is not completely intuitive at first glance.

If you have old reports that you want to keep, I recommend watching the video and then pulling up the new and old AdWords Report tools at the same time. Looking at the old report template will help you figure out where to look for data columns in the new tool.

Back in February, the Google AdWords Team for my company approached about beta testing this service. I was given a very brief overview of the process, but nothing that really drove in how powerful it was. That changed a week later while I was doing competitive research for a freelance client. Later that afternoon, I was reading up on remote desktop clients for Ubuntu Linux. While on that page, I saw and add for my client’s competitor.

Normally, seeing the random odd ad would not be surprising. I mean, how many mortgage, automobile and teeth whitening ads have you seen on web pages where there was absolutely no related content? However, I was on Linux site and saw an ad for the yarn store I had visited earlier that day. In that second, I completely understood the power of “remarketing” and, to be honest, felt a little violated.

After the dirty feeling faded away, I came to realize how wonderful remarketing is. That yarn ad on the Linux website wasn’t completely wasted as space. I had been on the product page, I had an interest in the product on those pages at the time. Then, when I had completely forgotten about that website and those products, I saw an ad which reminded me of that interest. A perfect example of advertising to pre-qualified leads.

It’s a little tricky to setup the Google Remarketing ads at first. You don’t need to worry about keywords, but you need to get everything setup and then insert tracking code into one of the landing pages on your website.

Read more about this at Search Engine Land.

Simple 301 Redirects Plugin for WordPress

Once installed, access the plugin in the Settings menu, add the old url (url from the “/” address after the domain to the end) and then add the complete url for the new destination. Not only is this 301 Redirect tool very simple. It’s easy to redirect traffic another domain.

I saw the above article (Practical Guide to 404 Error Pages: What WordPress is Missing) following blog post from Yoast when it was posted a few months back.  At the time it didn’t mean much to me because the place I would have used it on is running a ColdFusion server. Well, last week I made some changes to my blog while doing some SEO. Then I found myself in the situation where 1 of my old blog posts was showing up #1 in the Google organic search results for a particular query and that link ended up giving a 404 Error. The Yoast post meant something to me then.

Anyway, long story short, I went back and found this article and installed the 404.php code from the article and viola!

Well anyway, see for yourself…  http://clickkinetics.com/archives/9 (The outdated url with the new useful 404 Error page which automatically provides the reader with a link to the correct former page with new url).

It may take us a few days to get everything back to the way we like it,
but since we are between projects we thought it would be a great idea
to do some SEO on our own website!

In the article, Josh address concerns over budget and cost of entering a PPC market against big competition and how to deal with some this effectively. From experience, I can tell you that even with a big budget, there are companies out there spending an insane amount of money to generic words. In my case, I’m referring to pharmaceutical companies and companies marketing to them. Even after doing some great SEO work, you better be prepared to bleed cash if you plan to bid on campaign keywords that these guys are using. It’s just one more reason why drugs are expensive.

Another key point Josh makes is the importance of “standing out in a crowd”. This is really important in any type of marketing. Is your product or service cheaper than mainstream? Does your product have a benefit that the competition doesn’t have? What sets you apart from the noise on the web? Find that to help make you and your product stand out.

Josh also goes on to mention the importance of SEO, frankly stating that if the “pieces aren’t in place… [PPC] is pretty much a waste of money”. Yes, PPC can be great source of additional traffic and revenue. However, if your site is lacking some of the basic elements, an aggressive PPC program is just another way to spend a lot of money to make little.

Having created and managed literally hundreds of Google AdWords campaigns and somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 keywords, I can tell you that PPC is not a great substitute for good web page content. As Marc covers in his article, PPC may be an immediate short-term solution to your web traffic needs, but the sad reality is that you may end up paying BIG $ for your PPC campaigns. This is especially true if your web content is substandard. Depending on your market, there are companies out there bidding $15 a click on general keywords. Can you imagine paying $15 just to get someone to click on your paid ad when they search for the phrase “trek bike”? Now imagine that 100 people did this and only one of them purchased a $500 Trek.

Well, for very popular words linking to landing pages with very poor content, PPC can be a very expensive substitute for basic SEO. You need to have decent content on the landing page unless you want end up in a situation where you pay more for your ads than the expected revenue from PPC generated sales. Yes, SEO can take a long time get your pages to rank in the search engines. Yes, PPC can get you immediate, measurable results. So, I submit to you that you should really do both. If you need fast results, definitely do PPC. However, if you want to get the best results from your PPC while getting the most out of your limited budget, do some SEO first.

Obviously you already have a website or else you wouldn’t be considering SEO. Look at your potential landing pages. Do those pages have the keywords your customers will be searching for? If not, add those key words and phrases by working them into the content. Do this regardless and certainly before you consider starting a PPC campaign. Once those keywords are in your page, start your PPC activities and keep and eye on your organic search rankings.

As I was reading the article, it took me back to my Common Sense Selling training that I received from John Schumann (Whetstone Group). Some of the major points of which are to find and understand the needs of your customer and meet your customer on their level. After all people prefer to do business with people like them. People who understand their needs.

Find the Pain:

Using historically ingrained sales tactics; you can spew 300 great features about a product to a prospect (John Schumann calls it show up and throw up), but if you don’t tell them about the 1 feature that actually meets their need… odds are you will loose the sale to a competitor that specifically addresses that need. Using the Common Sense Selling strategy you would first ask the customer what problem or “pain” they are experiencing with a given situation and then listen and let them explain it. Become interested in this problem and then engage the prospect to go into more detail. After discovering their needs, then you take the time to explain how your product or service is the solution to that problem. Oh, yeah. Keep focus. You don’t need to follow up with the other 300 features and benefits.

In SEO marketing, your approach is a bit different than in a live sales call. However, you do need to make sure you understand the key needs of your customer. Don’t use the same old show up and throw up routine. You may think everyone wants bigger, faster stronger, but it’s entirely possible that simpler and safer is the real market need – bigger, faster, stronger etc. may just be fluff. Differentiate your product from the competition by providing relevant, keyword rich text that clearly communicates the solution to the need(s) of your audience.

While not as intensive week of Common Sense Sales Training, this a article is great place to start thinking about how to pitch your product differently from the other noise your audience is exposed to.
Turn Brain Science into Bucks: Incorporating Persuasive Messaging into Your Content Strategy from Bruce Clay, Inc. Blog by Virginia Nussey.

It may be “frenzy” or it may simply be complete naivety on the part of the client. Regardless of the reasons, you need to know where your advertising money is going. Why? Because with no effort at all, a company can blow wads of cash on less-than-helpful paid advertising in the form or Google Ads, Banner Ads, Space Ads, Sponsored Links, etc. There are 1,000’s of website out there begin created for the simple reason of hosting your PPC ads and making money off of them. In the last 18 months, I’ve generated a list of more than 6,000 domains which I have blocked from showing our Google Ads. That’s quite a lot of work sifting through placement reports and synchronizing a list that large over multiple accounts with hundreds of campaigns. A lot of work which saved my division $1,000’s on useless PPC which can be put better use.

It doesn’t matter is you want to do the work yourself or pay someone to do it, a little bit of education and paying attention to what’s going on can save you big (or small) money and make your advertising dollars more effective. Even if you don’t end up saving your company lots of money, at least you can help get your ads in front of actual customers. Otherwise, you might find yourself in the situation where your daily PPC budget is getting maxed out because all your click dollars went to a family of sites in Romania where you don’t even sell your product or service.