Andy Sutter: 2012

Monday, 31 December 2012

Google AdWords: "Webpage Not Known" In Campaigns

There are a couple reports over the weekend of an error in Google AdWords where the webpages in your campaigns are being reported as "webpage not known."

The reports come via Google AdWords Help and Yahoo Groups.

One advertiser said his URLs and web pages are working fine adding:

I'm getting "webpage not known" Urls in the "websites" tab inside Conversions tracking.

Anyone has this same problem. Is this a bug? Am I losing real conversion urls?

Google AdWords representative Zee said:

Thanks for posting back. I will escalate your issue to the support team. Please be patient as their reply might be a bit slow due to the holidays.

I have not seen many complaints about this but I have seen numerous.

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help and Yahoo Groups.

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Google AdWords: "Webpage Not Known" In Campaigns

There are a couple reports over the weekend of an error in Google AdWords where the webpages in your campaigns are being reported as "webpage not known."

The reports come via Google AdWords Help and Yahoo Groups.

One advertiser said his URLs and web pages are working fine adding:

I'm getting "webpage not known" Urls in the "websites" tab inside Conversions tracking.

Anyone has this same problem. Is this a bug? Am I losing real conversion urls?

Google AdWords representative Zee said:

Thanks for posting back. I will escalate your issue to the support team. Please be patient as their reply might be a bit slow due to the holidays.

I have not seen many complaints about this but I have seen numerous.

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help and Yahoo Groups.

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You Can Be a Hero on New Year’s!

New Year's Hero Today is a big day, it is New Year’s Eve and many celebrate by drinking and/or using substances that impair their ability to drive safely.

Today you can be a hero by stopping others from driving impaired and also by choosing to not drive impaired.

Anytime you can save a life you are a hero and there is no doubt that by not driving impaired and stopping others from driving impaired you will be saving a life tonight.

Before Leaving Tonight Gather Info: 3 Musts

1). Check your local cab companies and find out who is offering free or discounted rides home. Save these numbers in your phone, or your pocket, for yourself and your friends.

2). AAA is offering free towing up to 10 miles, according to the news. Get online or call your local AAA and get the correct information for your area.

3). If you are attending a large event plan ahead to find parking areas that will allow your vehicle to stay overnight so you don’t have to worry about towing charges.

Some Ideas to Avoid Drunk and Impaired Driving

Take a cab or bus to your party location – avoid worrying about your vehicle.
Exchange keys with a friend, but not your best friend. Help each other avoid driving.
When choosing a designated driver try to choose one that doesn’t ever drink. Before getting in a vehicle with a designated driver make sure they are sober.
Eat well before you start drinking and try to eat throughout the night. It is better to not be so wasted that you can’t make a good decision for you and your friends.
Reserve a hotel room close to your party location so you have a safe, and close, place to go. Consider getting double beds in case a friend needs a place to crash or split the bill with a friend(s) ahead of time.
Have friends that live close to a party location? Ask them if you can crash there.
Have a quick list in your pocket or on your phone of people you can call for rides or help tonight if you are impaired. This comes in handy not just for impaired driving issues, but also just for personal safety.

I know many people say that they don’t want to spend the money for cabs, towing or sleeping at a hotel, but if you compare the small amount of money spent on these preventative ideas to the cost of a DUI, and the legal issues that come with it, the money spent on preventative options is very small.

More importantly, you are avoiding taking a life or lives with preventative measures.

Image Credit: Shutterstock / ollyy

1.5 Million Teens Will Drive Under The Influence Tonight: Infographic

Click image to expand.

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Melissa Fach

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SEJ Editor - Melissa is the owner of SEO Aware, LLC. She is a consultant and trainer helping companies make the most of their content marketing and SEO. She specializes is the Psychology behind blogging and content marketing. She is a self-proclaimed Star Wars and Internet geek and volunteers with big cats at BigCatHabitat.org.

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You Can Be a Hero on New Year’s! - December 31, 2012
I’m Back… Let’s Make SEJ a Better Place - December 18, 2012
Thanksgiving Recipes From Geeks - November 19, 2012

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“Not Deliberate” Says Google, On Google Finance Showing Apple Stock Chart For “Sell”

Do a search on Google Finance for the word “sell,” and Google returns the stock chart for Apple. Why? Some thought Google had rigged this as an “Easter Egg” or joke. However, Google says this isn’t so.

In the first edition of this story, I could see no good reason why this was happening, something spotted by PFhub and which has since been noted by The Next Web and also a discussion on Reddit.

I’d seen a few comments that this was due to the Reuters-description that Google Finance shows for Apple having the word “sell” in it several times. Google tells us that is indeed the case, sending Search Engine Land this explanation:

This isn’t deliberate — our algorithms seem to be keying off of the words “sell” and “sells” in the description of this very popular stock symbol. We’re working on how to adjust things so it doesn’t happen anymore.

You can see an example of the root word “sell” appearing in the Apple description below:

As I wrote in the first edition of this story, this explanation seemed odd. For example, Amazon’s page on Google Finance also has the root word “sell” in its description, including the exact word, unlike Apple:

But Google also said this:

The popularity of the ticker is indeed part of this, and why Apple in particular is coming up even though the word may appear in other stock tickers’ descriptions.

Sure, someone at Google could have made Apple appear for “sell” as a joke. Google has a long history of Easter Egg jokes. But as I wrote in the first edition of the story, having it also work for “sells” would make no sense, in terms of stock jargon.

By the way, “buy” brings up Best Buy, even though the company’s symbol is BBY. So does “buys.” So Google Finance is clearly using more than the exact stock symbol or exact name to decide when to show the stock quote for a particular company.

Postscript (8:22pm ET): Story updated and revised based on Google’s statement.

Postscript (10:39pm ET): Google no longer shows Apple for a search on “sell,” showing this instead:

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Google Malware Warning Bug On Yahoo Parked Domains?

A Google Webmaster Help thread has reports that a Yahoo Domain/Hosting parking service seems to have triggered Google and Google Chrome to display a malware warning.

The user said his parked domain from Yahoo shows in Google Chrome as showing a "malware warning." He added, "there's content from geocities.com (!). How do I get ride of this and clean it up?"

True, there was/is content from GeoCities, which is a closed down property, on that site.

Google's John Mueller made it sound like the malware warning was a Google issue. He wrote:

Thanks for posting. I also brought this up with teams on our side, and it looks like we were able to tweak something there. At any rate, it looks like the message is gone, so you should be all set now :)

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

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Sunday, 30 December 2012

SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 28, 2012

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

Facebook Is Wikipedia’s Most Popular Article Of 2012: Hot Topic Or Confused Searchers?
What was the most viewed article on Wikipedia this year? The one about Facebook. Is Facebook really that popular of a Wikipedia topic? Perhaps, but more likely, confused searchers are getting to the Wikipedia page rather than Facebook itself. Yesterday on Toolserver.org, a service of Wikipedia Germany, lists of the Top 100 most viewed articles [...]
Search In Pics: Wooden Google Room, Ingress Comic & Google Holiday Gifts
In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. Wooden Google Room: Source: Facebook Google Ingress Comic: Source: Google+ Google’s Holiday Gift To Employees: Source: [...]
Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories On Google+ In 2012: Panda, Knowledge Graph & SEO
It’s started, the top lists of 2012! Over the next few days, we’ll be posting a series of these, including the most read Search Engine Land stories, the most tweeted ones and the ones most liked on Facebook. But to kick it off, the stories with the most +1′s on Google+. How did we collect [...]

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

Business Issues

Local Search & Maps

SEM Industry

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Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: December 28, 2012

This week at the Search Engine Roundtable was a bit slow for the holidays, just a reminder, I'll be in Israel next week for SMX Israel. Google's Matt Cutts said links from within press releases won't help your rankings. Google is now showing field testers their hotel reservations, orders and event tickets in the search results if they match in Gmail. Google Mobile is testing a "Quick View" button. Google lets you block your robots.txt file in the search results. Google's image exclusion feature is a bit picky. Google's external moments of culture were documented by Cutts. Googlers were spotted working on Christmas day, such as Cutts and Mueller. We had almost a thousand comments on our Google Happy Holidays vs Merry Christmas logo post. I also posted all the holiday logos and showed how Yahoo didn't have one this year. That was this past week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:

For the original iTunes version, click here.

Search Topics of Discussion:

Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

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Search & Analytics Year In Review

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The 12 Days of Social Media & Content Marketing

12 Days of Social Media and Content Marketing The team at TopRank Online Marketing would like to wish our online community a very merry holiday season. I for one get very nostalgic around the holidays and count down the days (starting in October) until I get to gather with family and friends to share a meal and make new memories.

For many families, part of the holiday tradition includes singing carols and watching Christmas movies from their childhood. There is one song in particular that gets stuck in my head every holiday season is The Twelve Days of Christmas. For a fun spin on a classic we bring you some of our favorite tips for the 12 Days of Social Media, Content Marketing & SEO.

On the __ day of Christmas my true love gave to me…

Days 1-6: Social Media Marketing

A Partridge in a Pear Tree: Know Your Customers

The first step in creating a successful social media strategy takes some research. Understanding who your best (and worst) customers are and what issues are most important to them will lend themselves to a successful social strategy. Start by utilizing your existing customers to:

Run surveys to identify their pain points
Ask essential questions during regularly scheduled meetings

2 Turtle Doves: Always Be Engaging

Setting up a social media profile and expecting to immediately generate results is an unrealistic approach to social media marketing. Identifying and reaching out to prospects, influencers, and current customers on a regular basis will begin setting the groundwork for an engaging social strategy.

3 French Hens: Offer Guidance

In addition to providing relevant and engaging content for your online community you should also offer guidance and help where appropriate. Say for example that you are spending time on a LinkedIn group and find that someone within the group poses a question related to your area of expertise. This presents the perfect opportunity to offer something of value without asking for something in return.

4 Calling Birds: Implement Tools

It doesn’t matter if you’re responsible for the implementation of social media for 1 client or 10 you’re going to need to use tools in order to get the maximum value out of your campaigns. Social media tools don’t have to break the bank. There are a number of affordable tools on the marketing including:

Hootsuite
Commun.It
Sprout Social
Vocus (TopRank Client)

5 Gold Rings: Spend Time Where Your Customers Interact

Depending on what industry you’re in, your customers will likely use a mixture of different social media sites to interact with personal and professional contacts. As a rule of thumb you will always want to have a presence on the “Big 5” social networks:

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Google+
YouTube

6 Geese-a-Laying : Measurement

How many golden eggs are you getting from your social strategy and how many are duds? Many of the tools that you are using to implement your social strategy can also provide insight and reporting of how your social profiles are performing. Platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn have built in insights that do not cost any additional money.

Days 7-12: Content Marketing

7 Swans-a-Swimming: Create An Editorial Plan

Now is the time (if you haven’t already) to begin planning your content for 2013. There are a few easy steps you can take to start the New Year off right including:

Determining your content themes for each quarter
Include any upcoming events in your content calendar
Research topics that lead to conversions on your website or blog

8 Maids-a-Milking: Map Content to Customers

Depending on what stage of the buying cycle your customers are in, there are different types of content that will need to be used to attract, engage, and convert them to close. The different stages of the customer buying cycle include:

Awareness
Consideration
Purchase
Service
Loyalty

9 Ladies Dancing: Hub & Spoke Model

A hub and spoke content marketing model is similar to a choreographed dance. Once you determine which of your web properties will be your centerpiece (or hub) you can begin creating and promoting content for your other sites (or spokes) that will drive traffic to your hub.

10 Lords-a-Leaping: Build Remarkable Content Regularly

Creating engaging web content on a regular basis is an essential part of content marketing best practices. However, if you truly want to wow your customers and prospects you need to create remarkable content that will stick with them. Examples of remarkable content include:

Infographics
Visual eBooks
White Papers
Powerpoint Presentations
Unique Graphics
Videos

11 Pipers Piping: Promote Your Content

For good content to become great it must be shared. In order to make your content as easy to share as possible you must make sure the content is at their fingertips. Adding social sharing buttons to your blog can make social sharing just a click away. Remarkable content that your team creates can also be repurposed on different social networks in the form of :

Photo albums
Individual social posts
A series of web videos or blog posts

12 Drummers Drumming: Take Advantage of Your Network

Your online network can provide a great deal of inspiration for your content plan. A simple yet engaging question to your Twitter or Facebook followers can provide a wealth of content that can be used for blog posts, website content, additional social posts, etc.

Which social media or content marketing tip do you think is the most essential part of a successful online marketing strategy? Whatever your plans for the next couple weeks we would like to wish you a happy, healthy, and safe holiday season.

Image provided via Shutterstock.

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Increase Facebook Interaction Wall Post Cheat Sheet

With many Facebook marketing campaigns, while content is king, success is oftentimes dependent on the details of the execution itself. Besides knowing what kind of content works best, the question comes up of how to get more likes, shares and even comments. In other words, how does one go about getting the most interaction on Facebook for any specific piece of content?

LinchpinSEO attempts to answer this all-important question with their “Facebook Wall Post Cheat Sheet.” Herein lies useful information about which types of content work best, how to get more likes, shares and comments, and even how to use emoticons to get the most out of wall posts.

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David Wallace

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David Wallace, co-founder and CEO of SearchRank, is a recognized expert in the industry of search and social media marketing. Since 1997, David has been involved in developing successful search engine and social media marketing campaigns for large and small businesses. In additions to his duties at SearchRank, David is editor in chief at Infographic Journal, a blog featuring some today's best infographics and data visualizations.

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Increase Facebook Interaction Wall Post Cheat Sheet - December 28, 2012
A Guide To Working With ‘Difficult’ Clients - December 9, 2012
Holiday Shopping Trends Every Marketer Needs To Know [infographic] - November 30, 2012

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3 Video Marketing Gifts: Content Repurposing Tools & Inspiration for 2013

Repeat after me: This holiday season, I resolve to take into consideration the increasingly mobile and visual preferences of my customers or readers, and to create and repurpose content to meet their needs, on whichever platform they use to connect with my business.

Recently, TopRank’s Alexis Hall and Lee Odden have each shared with us a few figures that underscore the importance of video in a modern day marketing strategy:

Sixty percent of executives will watch a video before reading a word of text on their screen.
Forty-two percent of executives have made a purchasing decision based on an online video.
500 years worth of YouTube videos are shared each day on Facebook.
Over 3 billion hours of video is consumed monthly on YouTube.

Over 53% of e-commerce retailers are already using non-product related video content (informational videos) on their sites. An additional 30.5% plan to add informational videos to their content arsenal in 2013.

Video Creation & Editing Using Existing Content: Getting Started

At TopRank, we’ve long been advocates of content repurposing as part of a sustainable marketing strategy; in fact, in this 2008 Online Marketing Blog post, Lee suggests repurposing PowerPoint decks to better leverage the research and content created for a presentation. More recently, we’ve used videos to add visual and audio to blog posts by way of an introduction or explanation (as in this video, a screenshot of which is at the top of this post). Yet marketers may be weary to take the plunge as video production can be costly and time-consuming.

Back in 2010, I discovered the value of content repurposing video through my work with a non-profit adult literacy agency. This organization held their first annual Transliteracy Conference that year, to teach educators how to reach learners more effectively through multimedia content.

This need to connect and educate applies in business as much as learning programs; your customers may be visual, auditory or kinesthetic learners, who want to be informed, educated and entertained, not marketed to. Now keep in mind, we had almost no budget to play with and though I had been creating written content for years, I had zero video production or editing skills. Yet we knew that people consume content in a variety of ways and in order to reach the greatest audience and help them actually retain information, we had to get creative.

After testing out a few free, open source video tools, we went with Cam Studio for the task of converting PowerPoint decks from the conference to videos we could upload to YouTube. Educators could access these videos online after the event, share them with other practitioners, and even embed them in their own content (see below). Videos are incredibly versatile content that can be shared on your blog, corporate site, social media accounts and more.

It took approximately two hours per presentation to record a voiceover track for each slide and edit, then upload the video. In keeping with accessibility standards, we created a second version of each, with closed captioning for hearing-impaired viewers (this took an additional hour per video).

How to Use Repurposed Video Content in Business

Imagine how you can use this content repurposing strategy for your business! There are even more free tools now and they’re far more advanced than those we had to choose from in 2010. Business videos can be used to:

Demonstrate unique uses of your product or service
Answer frequently asked questions
Share original research
Showcase customer testimonials
Introduce your staff or give a tour of your facilities
Tell the story of your company’s involvement in charitable or social good activities
Display customer success stories
Interview customers, suppliers, brand advocates or industry thought leaders
Video press releases
Much, much more… whatever your customers want and need to know!

Free & Open Source Tools for Video Content Marketers

For the purpose of this post, I’ll assume that like many people, you would prefer to experiment and learn the basics with a no-cost tool before taking the plunge and investing in video software. Here are a few free tools you can use to get started:

1. CamStudio – Desktop Screen Recorder

CamStudio is the stripped down, basic – and free – version of TechSmith’s popular Camtasia screen recording and video editing software. I’ve used both and have to say that Cam Studio was a fantastic beginner’s tool; it was easy to learn, simple to use and the finished product was decent.

The trick to using this tool for repurposing a presentation was to set the PowerPoint display time for each slide longer than required. For example, we set a 30-second slide time and it took 15 to 25 seconds for each voiceover recording. This allowed us to easily cut out the additional few seconds of slide time, rather than rushing to fit the audio in, for seamless transitions in the video to the next slide.

2. Google Hangouts

Google Hangouts are a free and incredibly flexible video tool from social network Google+. You might be familiar with its potential for online meetings and chat, but it’s also a great option for content repurposing.

Easily transition from live video to screen captures to dive deeper into blog posts, add commentary to written research studies, or read and explain customer testimonials. The entire video can be uploaded to YouTube at the push of a button.

3. Windows Movie Maker

This is a good option for marketers with a collection of images to convert to video. For example, your company could turn a set of charts or graphs based on original research into a video with commentary that links back to your original report. Or, narrate the story of a number of customers using your product in a variety of ways. The possibilities are only as limited as your imagination.

Eighty-five percent of the U.S. Internet audience watch videos online each month and on average, each user watches 1,399 minutes per month. To get your company started in video marketing as quickly and inexpensively as possible, without sacrificing the quality of your customer interactions, you need a solution that:

Allows you to repurpose existing content, making it fresh and relevant again without creating a whole new project.
Doesn’t have a huge learning curve.
Is flexible and allows you to incorporate screencaptures, audio (music or voiceover), subtitles or other text cues, and actual video.

Once you become comfortable with video content repurposing, you may choose to upgrade to a paid software solution with more features. In the meantime, I hope these free tools fit the bill!

How do you use video in your content marketing strategy? Share your tips and tricks with other readers in the comments.

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Saturday, 29 December 2012

3 Video Marketing Gifts: Content Repurposing Tools & Inspiration for 2013

Recently, TopRank’s Alexis Hall and Lee Odden have each shared with us a few figures that underscore the importance of video in a modern day marketing strategy:

Sixty percent of executives will watch a video before reading a word of text on their screen.
Forty-two percent of executives have made a purchasing decision based on an online video.
500 years worth of YouTube videos are shared each day on Facebook.
Over 3 billion hours of video is consumed monthly on YouTube.

Video Creation & Editing Using Existing Content: Getting Started

How to Use Repurposed Video Content in Business

Demonstrate unique uses of your product or service
Answer frequently asked questions
Share original research
Showcase customer testimonials
Introduce your staff or give a tour of your facilities
Tell the story of your company’s involvement in charitable or social good activities
Display customer success stories
Interview customers, suppliers, brand advocates or industry thought leaders
Video press releases
Much, much more… whatever your customers want and need to know!

Free & Open Source Tools for Video Content Marketers

1. CamStudio – Desktop Screen Recorder

2. Google Hangouts

3. Windows Movie Maker

Allows you to repurpose existing content, making it fresh and relevant again without creating a whole new project.
Doesn’t have a huge learning curve.
Is flexible and allows you to incorporate screencaptures, audio (music or voiceover), subtitles or other text cues, and actual video.

Once you become comfortable with video content repurposing, you may choose to upgrade to a paid software solution with more features. In the meantime, I hope these free tools fit the bill!

How do you use video in your content marketing strategy? Share your tips and tricks with other readers in the comments.

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Social Media Monitoring: What You Need to Know

Source: Statistics and Bar Graph | BigStock

Knowing your social media marketing goals and finding the right tools to attain it is not enough. You also need to know whether your campaign is working or not. Thus, social media monitoring is also integral for your SMM efforts.

Know Your Objective

Every action must have a goal—and not just any ordinary or broad objective, but something that is clear, specific, reasonable and actionable. It is simply to know what you want to discover on your social media marketing efforts.

Do you want to get alerts on what other people are saying about you or your brand? Perhaps you want to know what your potential market needs or want to know. Or it can be as simple as finding anyone that will mention your chosen keyword so you can join in with the conversation.

Know Your Priorities

Social media marketing can be overwhelming, especially when picking out the platform to choose. That’s why you also have to decide what battle to join. Triaging all social media messages that come your way could help when focusing on what’s important. If you have a big business with a handful of known products, you can categorize your SMM campaign based on it or by type of messages that you want to track.

Know Where to Monitor

Since there a lot of social media networks available, monitoring each of them can be daunting. That’s why you need to know which platform to monitor. Find the ones that brings the most exposure for your brand, as well as where majority of your existing and potential market at hanging out in the digital world. This could also be helpful when wanting to know what channel to use when trying to listen on what other people say about your or your brand.

Know What to Monitor

Other than knowing where to monitor, you also need to know what to monitor. It all boils down to your campaign’s objectives. The marketing itself can be overwhelming, but monitoring your campaign’s success could be worse. Knowing what you’re looking for can help you manage your tracking efforts easily.

Know What Tools to Use

Of course, the best way to monitor your campaign is with the help of social media marketing tools. List down the things that you need to track and your chosen platform, and then find the right tool that would work well with your platform and deliver what you need.

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Social Media Monitoring: What You Need to Know - October 19, 2012
Spotted: Facebook Profile Completion Meters - October 19, 2012
Ad Unit for Apps, Now Available to All Developers on Facebook Mobile - October 18, 2012

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