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My Weekend Musings

Posted by: Ian Comments: 6 comments so far

Jan. 15

My good friend Morgan Linton has one of the absolute best blogs on the Internet (if not the best one) about domaining. I have been reading Morgan’s blog forever and frequently commentate there. One of my favorite posts he does is his weekend musings (here’s a link to Morgan’s most recent Weekend Musings). Also, my good friend Jason Thompson has an amazing blog about domaining (on a Dot Co domain name) that I read every single day (I can’t get enough of it). Jason also frequently writes about his weekend musings. The week is so hectic that I too like to reflect back on things and think at a higher level during the weekends. Today is my first weekend musings post, inspired by Morgan and Jason, the first of many!

It’s really hard for me to say “no”. Sometimes I wish I did a better job at this. That said, I’m an ambitious guy and want to do it all. If you’re waiting on my for something, hang tight, I will get through everything. So many amazing things to get through in 2012!
I Worked This Weekend again! I didn’t work all day Sunday, but worked all day and night Saturday. It honestly felt like all weekend, however, because I slept half the day today recovering from my big day yesterday. I had an important deadline that I just had to hit (others depended on me). It’s the beginning of a new year and I’m trying to start the year aggressively. I don’t plan on doing this every weekend, but the beginning of the year is a good time to invest the extra hours, in my opinion (since you enjoy the benefits of the work all year and beyond).
I really enjoy working on SEO, as much as paid search. The project I worked on all weekend was actually an on-page SEO one which is quite fun. My advice to those in the PPC career path: Explore related fields such as SEO, display, email, and affiliate marketing. You don’t have to spend a ton of time, but even a small amount cross-channel experience will add greatly to your perspective.
Posts about commentating get a lot of interest. I decided to write my post about how Blogs With Top Commentators Are Now Rare as a follow-up to my very popular Blog Commentating Strategy. My new post got a lot of comments and interest. This just goes to show that I’m not the only one who’s passionate about commentating.
I’m starting to see Six Sitelinks show up on my paid search ads, not only for trademark/brand keywords but for generic keywords too. Make sure you have at least six sitelinks deployed in each of your Google AdWords campaigns.
SMX West San Jose is coming up in late February. If you haven’t registered yet, I highly recommend doing so. Here’s my recap of SMX West 2011. I’m particularly excited about joining my friends at Marin Software for a San Jose Sharks game after the conference.
Hip hop is the best. I keep discovering great tracks. I’m listening to this Slum Village track right now called “Hold Tight” that features Q-Tip. I really want to see Q-Tip / A Tribe Called Quest in concert one of these days.

Image of TGIF © iStockPhoto – KLH49

Posted in: Random | Tags: weekend musings | Comments: 6 comments so far, join the discussion!

Fun Times At Anchor Brewing With Google

Posted by: Ian Comments: 3 comments so far

Jan. 13

Today, I had an amazing time. My team and I visited Anchor Brewing with Google! You might recall that I recently watched the SF Giants game at Google’s Luxury Suite. Our Google account management team is truly unparalleled. Not only do they provide the highest possible level of service, but they have made a tremendous effort to build a lasting relationship with us on a personal level. That’s what it’s all about in my opinion. Successful networking and business relationships are all about the long-term.

Anchor Steam San Francisco

Have you heard of Anchor Steam before? Here in San Francisco / Silicon Valley, Anchor Steam is quite the popular beer. They have been making amazing beer since 1896. Importantly, they make beer the old fashioned way, and it’s absolutely some of the best tasting beer you can find.

Today at Anchor Brewing, we enjoyed a really great tour of their facility. It’s super impressive. The facility is huge and is the central location where Anchor Steam makes all their beer, right in downtown San Francisco. Aside from seeing the facility, I enjoyed learning about Anchor Brewing’s history. The company certainly faced challenges over the years. However, despite all odds, they made it due to persistence and of course quality. This is an important lesson for any business, and is quite the motivational story. The tour ended with some great beer tasting, with my favorite beer being the “Breckle’s Brown Ale”.

Anchor Summer Beer

I also enjoyed today’s tour because it was the perfect excuse to take it a little easy. Pay per click is a very intense career path. Since the beginning of the new year, I have been working around the clock. I’m thankful for that, it has been fun. That said, I need to remind myself to take a little time off. The Anchor Brewing tour provided the perfect opportunity to do so.

Of course, the best part of today was spending quality time with friends. I couldn’t think of a better group to spend time with outside of our normal work environment. Thanks so much Google for arranging this event and making it happen, you are the best! Want to visit Anchor Brewing yourself? Make sure to make reservations in advance, it’s a very popular tour and fills up quickly.

Anchor Steam Google Trip

Images in this post © PPCIan.com

Posted in: Networking | Tags: anchor brewing, anchor steam | Comments: 3 comments so far, join the discussion!

Hearst Media Services Has a Neat PPC Strategy

Posted by: Ian Comments: 4 comments so far

Jan. 11

Hearst is one of the largest traditional media empires around. I’m talking about major brands such as Car and Driver, ESPN, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Hearst owns newspapers, magazines, TV stations, and more. As a savvy media company, Hearst is now involved in online marketing. It makes perfect sense, the statistics are staggering. More and more online media is being consumed each year. Of particular interest, Hearst now operates an online marketing agency and I feel that the way they are marketing their agency via PPC is quite unique.

In the screenshot below, you can see that I searched for “PPC Ian”. I like to search my own name from time to time to make sure my PPC ad is displaying properly. You can never sanity check things enough, and that’s why I have Six Essential Campaign Checks that I run multiple times each day.

The search results in the screenshot show both myself and SF Gate showing up. What is SF Gate? It’s a cool, local website here in the SF Bay Area. I’m quite familiar with SF Gate and have been to the site before. I was surprised to see SF Gate displaying on a PPC-related term and I assumed the SF Gate ad broad matched to the “PPC” in my name. After seeing who was advertising, I started reading the ad and it piqued my interest. I had no idea that SF Gate offered online marketing services.

Upon clicking the ad, I landed on a page within the SF Gate website illustrating the Bay Area Hearst Media Services agency (you can check out the landing page here). I guess SF Gate is owned by Hearst. I personally feel the landing page could target a higher conversion rate, maybe with a prominent email capture. However, that’s not the core takeaway here.

Hearst Could have just sent this traffic to their core website for Hearst Media Services. However, they instead decided to send the traffic to a local brand, SF Gate. I think this is quite the strategy. Here in the Bay Area, I’m sure more people have heard of SF Gate than Hearst Media Services. They are leveraging their well-known, local brand name to draw the user in and then introduce them to Hearst Media Services. I really like this strategy and feel like it’s a great way to leverage an existing portfolio of local brands for improved click through rates. Way to go Hearst Media Services and I hope to run into you at one of the upcoming industry conferences!

SF Gate

Posted in: Offline Marketing | Tags: hearst, hearst media services | Comments: 4 comments so far, join the discussion!

Download The 7 Habits of Highly Effective SEM eBook

Posted by: Ian Comments: Be the first person to comment

Jan. 09

I’m a huge fan of SEM eBooks and whitepapers, I try to read them all. Today I’m thrilled to share one of the best search engine marketing eBooks I have read, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective SEM by PPC Associates.

PPC Associates, one of the top SEM agencies around, is on a roll. If you work in the Silicon Valley like me, make sure to keep an eye out for the PPC Associates Billboards on 101 near Palo Alto. They absolutely rock.

PPC Associates co-founder and CEO David Rodnitzky wrote the 7 Habits of Highly Effective SEM. This 25 page eBook is quite detailed, it’s single-spaced and offers specific strategies on how you can improve your paid search campaigns. In my opinion, this is a must-have guide for both beginners and advanced SEM gurus alike. It’s truly in-depth, one of the most comprehensive around. Following is an outline of the 7 Habits that David covers.

Habit #1: Choosing the Right Search Engines
Habit #2: Choosing the Right Keywords
Habit #3: Creating the Right Ad Text
Habit #4: Setting the Right Bids
Habit #5: Creating the Right Landing Pages
Habit #6: Setting Up the Right Reporting and Tracking
Habit #7: Creating the Right Targeting

It’s the beginning of a new year. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective SEM includes great strategies and tips that will spark ideas to grow your search marketing program in 2012 and beyond. After clicking this link, you simply need to enter your name, email, company, phone, and monthly budget. Upon doing so, you will be able to download the 7 Habits guide immediately. I hope you enjoy this great eBook as much as I do!

Posted in: Whitepapers | Tags: ppc associates, sem ebook | Comments: Be the first person to comment!

An Example of Great Ad Copy On Google AdWords

Posted by: Ian Comments: 3 comments so far

Jan. 08

Ad copy is one of the single biggest campaign levers on Google AdWords. Optimize your ad copy and you will experience an increased CTR (which means more traffic). Ultimately, that higher CTR will translate into a better quality score and therefore decreased CPCs with increased ad position. Increase the effectiveness of your ad copy and your ads will also display more sitelinks.

I’m always testing new ad copy. Today, I wanted to share the competitive landscape from the people search vertical (check out the screenshot below). I used to work at Inflection, one of the hottest startups in the Bay Area and a leader in the people search space.

In the screenshot below, check out the first ad for Intelius. Intelius is leveraging the “1) 2)” ad copy strategy. I really like this ad because it illustrates the simplicity of Intelius. I’m definitely not the only one. The fact that Intelius has four sitelinks displaying on a generic term like “people search” means that their CTR is quite high. If your company offers a streamlined service, I highly recommend testing the “1) 2)” ad copy yourself.