Archive for October, 2009

SEM brand lift, maybe

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

A recent post in the Google Retail Advertising Blog describes a study conducted by Google and Levi’s to see if search ads generated brand awareness. The study demonstrated increased brand awareness, but there are some significant caveats to extrapolating to other brands. The study showed a significant increase in Levi’s brand awareness among people who [...]

Bug in Microsoft adCenter geo-targeting

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Original Post, October 28, 3:27 PST Double check your geographic targeting in Microsoft adCenter! We have encountered and reproduced a bug with a support representative in which selecting specific US states for inclusion/exclusion does not get saved. More specifically, we have a US campaign that we switched from national targeting to do so by state [...]

Local SEO: local store marketing – part 1

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Studies indicate that “70% of U.S. Households Now Use the Internet When Shopping Locally for Products and Services.” (The Kelsey Group and ConStat Indicates) Ian White reported that “40% of [search] queries have local intent.” If you own a business that depends on local traffic – restaurants, lodging, retail stores and/or services – you simply [...]

Blog Action Day

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Today is Blog Action Day, and we’re at a loss for profound additions to the deluge of climate change blog posts. This is a business blog, and we are reluctant to share personal issues here. However, climate change is more than a personal issue, and it is already affecting many businesses and — consequently — [...]

Improving web form conversion rates

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

You can drive all the traffic in the world to your website, but it’s a waste the visitors don’t convert. Form design is very often a significant contributor to poor conversion rates. While Key Principles and Specific Recommendations that follow are generally written for forms that solicit contact information from potential customers, they can also [...]

Why and how to tag links

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

When you create online advertising of any kind, it is possible to “tag” the ads in a way that website analytics software like Google Analytics and WebTrends can provide additional information about these traffic sources. For example, tagging can make it possible to tell exactly which ad among several provides the most online purchases or [...]