Internet Marketing Blog

What is the purpose of your website’s home page? Is it to brand, sell a product, talk about the company, direct people to the right information, or entertain visitors? Should it be colorful or stark? Simple or busy? Focused or comprehensive?

All of the other questions and concerns are acadmic if website visitors leave, which can happen if you don’t adequately execute on the two primary roles of a home page.

Role #1: Confirm That Visitors Are At The Right Place
When someone arrives at your site, the very first thing they are trying to determine–consciously or not–is if they have found a website that has the information they need. If they found your site from searching for “vacuum cleaners”, is it clear that you sell them? If they are looking for publishing services, does your home page clearly indicate that you provide them? This doesn’t mean you should show every product or service on your home page. This would be unrealistic for a company with a broad selection, like Amazon or Sears. In such cases, identify representative pictures and language that visitors are likely to interpret as inclusive of their goals. In the case of vacuum cleaners, Sears might indicate and entire category of home appliances or cleaning supplies.

Role #2: Direct Visitors to More Detailed Information
If people can’t find the information they need, they’ll leave. The home page provides the foundation and starting point for navigating detailed content. Logical navigation structure allows users to quickly find the information that they are seeking. Most users don’t expect to find every question answered on a single page, and trying to do so also makes it difficult for people to find answers to specific questions. Well designed navigation makes your website more intuitive than using a search engine or your competitors’ websites.

If these roles are not fulfilled by the home page, and to some extent the overall site design, visitors won’t stick around long enough to become customers.

In an earlier post we talked about how High CTR Isn’t Everything, but it can be incredibly powerful at reducing the cost of lead acquisition.

Recently we started managing an AdWords campaign for a software company. Over the first month–before substantial optimization had taken place–the CTR of the most popular ad group was 2.5%. After optimization of ads and keyword targeting, the CTR was more than doubled to 5.9%. Because the ad position is determined largely by the CTR, the CPC went from $0.84 the first month to $0.43 in the second month. In other words, the cost of the campaign was almost cut in half in one month, and this was even at a higher average ad position!

What did we do? Simple:

• Selected the right keywords.
• Used keyword matching options.
• Used negative keywords.
• Tested different ads.

The above results are not necessarily indicative of what you can expect every time, but we have used these techniques to significantly improve the cost effectiveness of every campaign that we manage.

The New York Times recently noted that SEO practices are starting to change the way news is written. In an effort to gain more visibility (and hence traffic) from search engines, titles and articles are becoming more keyword-rich.

Many reporters and online editors are becoming more keyword-savvy: learning to identify the most attractive keywords and use them within titles and text. This new practice is seen by some as a form of “search engine political correctness”, removing some of the creativity and character from writing. Titles that utilize techniques like irony, rhyme, or cultural allusion may work well for humans, but the purely literal interpretations of machines as well as the relative banality of common search phrases makes such creativity counter-productive in terms of getting more traffic from search engines. Others see the use of keywords less as a serious threat to journalistic license than as yet another constraint that must be satisfied.

The fact that SEO is creeping into the fourth estate is not really much of a surprise. News is, after all, a business, and businesses need customers. A larger audience of readers means more ads, more ad revenue, and potentially more subscribers. Good search engine rankings can help online news sources attract a larger audience.

Welcome, Gray Lady, to the age of search.

Michael Schwarz recently gave a Google Tech Talk on the bidding systems used by Google AdWords, Yahoo Sponsored Search, and other PPC programs that utilize “Generalized Second Price” (GSP) auctions. The presentation provides a very interesting analysis of bidding strategies and stability of the GSP system, comparing it to others that in some cases are less effective (first price auctions) and one that is “ideal” (Vickrey-Clarke-Groves).

Despite the technical and historical interest of the presentation, it does not provide significant new insights into PPC bidding strategies for two primary reasons. First, it neglects to account for some external influencers of bidder behavior. Second, the conclusions that the theory reaches about the ideal bidding strategy assume that advertisers know what amounts to a break-even value for ad clicks, which is difficult to determine for most companies.

One of my least favorite things about Yahoo Sponsored Search (YSS, formerly Overture), is that ad placement is determined only by bid. Google’s AdWords program ranks ads according to a combination of bid, click-through-rate (CTR), and other factors, the net result being that intelligent advertisers are rewarded with better “bidding power” over those lesser quality advertisements. Without CTR, YSS ads are subject bidding wars that can drive up costs and require significantly more frequent bid adjustments.  Now comes word that Yahoo is testing a system that includes CTR. While currently only available in Scandinavia, the plans appear to be to rollout the new program within the next few months.

I have counseled many clients to limit spending on YSS or avoid it entirely, mostly because of the higher costs that simple bid-for-position imposed. If CTR is properly implemented, it is very likely that I will reverse my position, recommending that clients place advertisements that reach 30-40% of Internet search engine users.

Coremetrics has just announced the acquisition of IBM’s SurfAid Analytics business. SurfAid is an on-demand hosted analytics service geared for large websites. Coremetrics is vague about how it will integrate SurfAid into its existing product offerings.

The SurfAid product is intended for large organizations with significant traffic volume and large analytics budgets. Under IBM, it was priced at a minimum of $100/month limited reporting. Comprehensive functionality cost upwards of $1500/month.