Life in the Blue

While I am not the fashion guru like some of my friends, I like to think that I check out the sexy men in the pages of GQ Magazine enough to be fashionable. (For example I know that Reef sandals need to be out of your wardrobe lineup card by May 1st of this year.)

So I can keep all of my loyal readers up to date on the latest fashion trends on and offline, let me tell you what else is no longer cool. Text over pictures on websites. That’s right, ever since photoshop made its way into the hands of computer nerds, text has been fumbling its way on top of pictures with about the same level of smoothness I had in the back seat of a Ford Taurus on Senior Prom.

Like all things photoshop related, it is dangerous. It’s hard to read, looks trashy, and worst of all, it just isn’t cool like me.

Well those days are behind us now. Get out your css files because words over pictures is Bush. You hear that Audry! Bush League! From now on text is to be put only over a solid color. Get with it, it’s the 21 century my friends. Text over Pictures? What is that? The end result of having your sister-in-law’s 19-year-old friend, Sprinkles, design your website?

I know what you are going to say. “I am so good at pretending to be a graphic designer that I can pull it off.” No you can’t. It’s interesting that you should even go there. If you think text over images is cool, you are not only not good at pretending to be a graphic designer, you probably aren’t cool in any way, shape or form. In fact, you yourself are Bush League. This is where I come in, I help the little guy. Text over images. Please, get real.

So there you have it friends. Now go put on your reefs and go outside and play.

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I decided to bite on the ABC’s of SEO sponsored by Enviseo for another post.

By now I am sure that someone like ALGS Nate has explained to you why milk is located in the far back corner of a grocery store. The reason for this is simple. The supermarket is trying to get as much money from each shopper as possible. They don’t want you to simply buy the milk you originally walked in there to get, they also want you to buy a few other ‘impulse’ items while you are there.

To get milk you have to walk thru all the other drinks, bread, and of course all kinds of tofu organic food that has the flavor of a piece of paper. There’s just nothing like an organic ham flown in with rice pellets on an organic airplane from China to brighten anyone’s case of the Monday’s.

The point is the store has already spent all kinds of advertising and fixed costs to get the person into the store. Now, what if they buy two items instead of just one? That’s pure profit and that’s how ALGS Nate and his excel files makes money honey. Since SEO Nate has $10,000 to throw away on TV with Rob Lowe, he will happily drop $20 for some freeze dried carrots wrapped in organic bread to go with the milk he bought for his local donkey.

While it is true that driving visitors on an easily navigated path thru your site is the best way to convert them, this doesn’t mean you have to throw out all sorts of other money making opportunities. Maybe you could recommend a similar item or gift certificate. If all else fails throw adsense in your site, as long as you can do so without making your site look spammy or hurt its rankings.

Monetizing visitors is difficult and there are always barriers like sending people to other crappy websites that are not optimized, tracking issues or having to actually converse with someone outside of your cubicle, but the extra profit you can gain makes it worth a try. M is for monetize, and that’s good enough for me.

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It’s that time of year again. That special time during the holidays where we gather round at the local pub and watch such college football Bowl Game classics as Middle Tennessee State vs Central Michigan, and the long time American tradition, the International Bowl. Along with the college bowl season comes the rush online shopping period.

As last minute shoppers shop and click, they can generate some spendy PPC costs. But not all users are great for a site to have. Maybe they are shopping for stuff you don’t offer, are looking for a shipping offer you don’t provide or have no clue what they want and are just browsing away. I call these people ‘Negative Donkey’s.’ They click on your ads but you have little chance of converting them into a sale. Although it is not possible to totally rid your life of Negative Donkey’s, there are steps you can take to help limit their presence, and soon, hopefully they will no longer exist to you. In short, Donkey’s on your site are about as valuable as flip-flops in December.

Negative keywords can help. AdWords lets you easily add lots of negative keywords. One easy trick is to look at your referring keywords from an analytics account like Google Analytics, or you may even have your own tracking. See what keywords people are typing in to get to your site for both PPC and organic. This is different than the keyword you are actually bidding on by the way. For example, if you don’t offer anything for free, make that a negative word. These people are looking for something free, you don’t have it, and so you don’t need to get them to your site. If they are looking for strawberry candy canes, but you only sell peppermint ones, strawberry can be a negative keyword.

The flip side to that coin is that if you notice people converting on your site from keywords that you hadn’t thought of before, you can promptly add them to your accounts. If they are good keywords you will be on your way buying a private party bus so you don’t have to wait for a plane at the airport ever again.

Don’t get caught into the thinking of, “Well, even if I don’t have it as a negative keyword, no one that searches that will click on may ad anyway.” This is bad for two reasons. First, many online users are about as smart as a pile of coathangers. Don’t ever think a user is too smart not to do anything. If they can do it, they will. Second, even if the user is not clicking on your ad, it is hurting your click thru rate. All those times where your ad is showing and you aren’t getting a click adds up and kills your CTR.

Another thing that can help is to be very clear in your ad text as to what it is your site offers. Don’t advertise things you don’t have. If you only sell baseball equipment, your ad should say so. If the search is for ‘sporting goods’ and the person is actually looking for golf clubs, you don’t need them click on your ad and costing you money that could be spent on beer. Another example is that if you are providing high end goods in some industry that are high end in price, put that in the ad. Then you won’t get Donkey’s that are trying to spend $1.99 on Wal-Mart brand t-shirts wasting your advertising budget when you only provide cashmere sweaters.

The final way to help out is try to convert the Donkey’s into something else. They might be looking for Wal-Mart t-shirts, but you don’t have them. So maybe you could set up an affiliate program with a low end clothing provider. Then you ad some text to you page that says, if you are looking for items not offered here, check out our partner site at…Maybe they go there and buys something and you can earn commission.

Keeping the Donkey’s off your PPC traffic will help you minimize costs. You don’t want them and they don’t want you, so there is no need for the two of you to have met. Either avoid them or find a way to convert them, and have a Life in the Blue…Christmas.

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It is getting tougher and tougher to compete in the PPC landscape. More people are getting involved everyday, and bids are always going up. I once read that PPC costs increased at 4% a month, not sure how accurate that is, but I could believe it. Can you imagine if the cost of beer or gin went up at 4% a month? I would either be broke or still on my first liver, not sure which.

Part of being successful and able to compete in the game we call pay per click is being successful on your site, and getting the most value for your traffic. Think about, if your conversion rate increased from 2% to 4%? If your conversion rates doubled you would make twice as much money, assuming you have scaled your process for selling or doing what ever it is you do. Instead of making $10 per visitor after PPC expenses you would be making $20. Now, if the bid price jumps from $4 to $5, it doesn’t seem so bad.

Another idea is to find a way to generate more money from each user. Maybe you could convince them to buy two things instead of just one. After all, if they are buying ball, they are going to need the bat. This also can increase the value you get from each PPC visitor.

By night I am a conversion guru, so more tips to come on that in the future, but keep this in mind. I tell people this every day. You see your webpage all the time, you visit it constantly. Try a different approach and do this:

Sit down at your computer, search one of your terms, look at the completion and their ands and then look at yours. What makes yours stick out? Is there something they are offering that you aren’t? What would you think if you were an online shopper and were seeing these results for the first time?

Then go to the other sites and finally go to yours. Again, how is yours different? Look for things they are doing to help convert the visitor and consider them for your site. Maybe your site is missing something crucial, or missing the point and delivering the wrong message. One key thing is be sure your keyword, ad and landing page are all related. It should be like a continuous magical journey. Remember field trips when you were little and the jean shorts wearing hippie would yell at you ‘stay on the path!’ This is how it should be for your visitor, a journey where no one wants to stray off the path and wander. It’s like a line from search to purchase.

For example, if the search is for ‘donkeys’ and your ad is about donkeys, it would make sense that the lading page reinforces that this is the place to be for donkeys. The only true way to known these things is thru conversion testing, but this is a great place to start.

You are guaranteed of three things in life death, taxes and raising PPC costs. As long as you can stay ahead of your competitors and be able to move with increasing costs, you can be living the good life, life in the blue.

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