Posted on May 19, 2011 by Hans Riemer
Would you build your house with a Faulty foundation?
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten a call that went something like this: “Hi, we just had our website completely redesigned and now that it’s live, we’d like the site to get more traffic from the search engines. Can you help?”
Of course we can help. But frankly, the correct answer is, “I wish you’d talked to me before you launched the new site.”
It’s a fact that most sites suffer a drop in traffic right after a re-build. Why? Most sites have search rank and traffic for at least SOME non-branded keywords before the rebuild. What often happens next is that they still show up in the same place in the organic search results for a while, but anyone clicking on the listing will land on a 404 error – Page Not Found because the content that Google was pointing to is now located at a new URL which Google doesn’t know about yet.
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Posted on May 6, 2011 by Hans Riemer
Privacy Requirement
Google has announced a new set of requirements for AdWords advertisers that go into effect on May 17, 2011. If you use AdWords to drive clicks to your website and you collect any kind of personal or financial information on your website, then these rules will apply to you.
Google will require AdWords advertisers to disclose the following before a person is asked to enter information on the site:
- How personal or financial information will be used.
- How users can opt-out later.
- That you use SSL security for collecting certain personal or financial data.
Google provides examples of what they mean by personal and financial information here.
You can read Google’s announcement, dated May 4, 2011, regarding the new policy here.
Posted on May 2, 2011 by Hans Riemer
Many Google Adwords advertisers have improved their Adwords ROI using Google’s Display Network because it allows them to extend their advertising reach and target prospects on contextually relevant websites that display Google ads. However, the contextual targeting has always been far from perfect and advertisers are often shocked to discover their ads appearing on non-contextually related web pages, parked domains and low quality sites. By “low quality sites” we mean MFA or Made-For-AdSense sites where the sole purpose is for the website owner to get a portion of the cost per click the Google advertiser pays. The more clicks, the more money they make. As you can imagine, the quality of traffic from sites like this is poor.
On the other hand, if a Display Network campaign is setup properly and with on-going optimization and vigilant blocking of poor quality sites, it can be quite profitable for the advertiser. Some of our clients have received more leads, at a lower cost per lead, from the Display Network than from Search.
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