Disqus - Latest Comments for Pat East

Re: It’s An Ad-Group Not A Keyword Group

Pat East — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:01:21 -0000

Craig - just a quick note to thank you for the link (I'm the president/CEO of Hanapin, the company that presents PPC Hero) and to let you know that your posts have been extremely valuable and high quality. Especially loved the keyword traps series. No one is talking about this stuff! Keep up the good work.

Re: The three step search engine optimization plan

Pat East — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 21:14:41 -0000

It's ironic that you introduce the post by saying that most SEO information is garbage but then pass off your 2nd and 3rd tips as being helpful (your 1st tip is good). Of course you need to create relevant content. Of course you need to find ways to get links back to you. Neither of these are news flashes. To win a basketball game, you need to score more points than the other team, too. Everybody knows that but we need to know *how* to do that. Give us something we can implement now!

Re: My secret SEO source

Pat East — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:57:55 -0000

So, if this thing comes out monthly, are you saying that there's more than three steps now?

http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2007/10/3...

So, which is the product I should buy - yours or the one you have an affiliate link to?

Re: Maturation of Paid Search Means the End of the Free Lunch

Pat East — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 08:51:28 -0000

By talking only about the increase in bids, Business Week incorrectly assumes that the bid is the only or main variable that determines ROI. Their article implies that if the bid increases, then an advertiser's ROI necessarily decreases.

This couldn't be further from the truth. Thinking that the bid is the only variable is why so many companies are getting unnecessarily burned by PPC.

BW mentions Baby Age specifically. They generated more clicks but fewer but fewer buyers: "Even as BabyAge's $1.2 million worth of search ads got more clicks in 2006, they netted fewer actual buyers, effectively doubling their cost."

This quote should be a big red flag to Baby Age and all other PPC advertisers! Baby Age's ROI is decreasing not because of increased bids but because of lower conversion rate!

Babe Age and Business Week have somehow overlooked this. There are several variables or levers that can affect a PPC advertiser's ROI. I call them levers because when you "pull" any of them, you can dramatically affect your ROI.

Search Venue â€“ Google AdWords, Microsoft adCenter, Yahoo! Search Marketing and niche search engines like Business.com can yield dramatically different ROIs. Many companies advertise only on Google (in fact, some of our clients refer to "pay per click" as "adwords") and many more don't even try the niche search engines. For most of our clients, we advertise on as many search engines as possible. For some, the ROI just isn't there, so we shift the budget to other search engines. We often advertise only Google or only Yahoo for particular clients because those generate the best ROI for them.

Keyword Research â€“ Andy mentions that small sized companies have already targeted the long tail and that medium sized companies will start to do so in 2007. In my experience in managing PPC campaigns over the last 7 years, I have not seen this. Most small companies are too busy focusing on the day-to-day operations to even realize they need an extensive keyword list (many prospective clients of all sizes gasp when I say that we could easily expand their keyword list to 1,000-10,000, which for some clients is still too small). Most medium sized companies want to rank well for main high-traffic keywords because they don't realize there's other keywords to target. Some want to impress their sales force or board of advisors/directors because vanity is more important than how much traffic or leads they're generating. That's not to say that all small or medium sized companies fit these molds; just the ones we've had contact with.

Bidding Strategy â€“ You can have a bidding strategy? Historically, most companies have been too focused on what their bids are (because bids play the biggest part in determining the #1 position, which most small and medium sized businesses think is the holy grail) instead of how much traffic they're generating or what their ROI is from those particular bids. For most industries, the #3-#5 positions typically generate 75%-80% of the leads/sales that the #1 position does but for 50% of the cost. Need further proof of the focus on bids and not on ROI? The number of pages on Google for "bid management" is 29 million. For "day parting," it's less than 1.5 million. A tactic like day parting could help a ton of advertisers but most companies don't even know it exists.

Ad Creation / Landing Page Creation â€“ When Google introduced their quality score, they forced all advertisers to do what the best advertisers were already doingâ€”making their ads and landing pages as relevant as possible to their keywords. Google has specifically introduced this because too many ads were (and still are) irrelevant. They know that if they can force advertisers to create more relevant ads, they'll generate a higher ROI. Google, by virtue of introducing the quality score, is necessarily saying that there's another variable to PPC that just bids!

Heed what Google is trying to tell you with their quality score and stop listening to publications like Business Week who proved with their expose on click fraud that they have no idea how the online world works.

Re: Yahoo Not Deleting Advertiser Accounts, Claims Account Offline Due to Spam

Pat East — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 12:53:26 -0000

Fortunately or unfortunately, I don't think Florian's account going offline has anything to do with Yahoo Panama nor does it have anything to do with "quality control." I think it has to do with overzealous editors. About 6 months ago, we had a massive amount (8,000 of 10,000 keywords) of keywords taken offline due to "quality control." When we asked Yahoo about it, we were given nearly the same response that Wareham gave. Unfortunately, it didn't hold water. The account in question was for a health insurance company (with the keyword "health insurance" sprinkled throughout the site). They removed the keyword "health insurance" because it wasn't related to the site. Every other keyword in the account was approved by their system (not sure how you can spam Yahoo given that they have an editorial process) and had related content on the site. After three weeks and literarily 20 phone calls, we got all of our keywords reinstated. I think the main issue isn't Yahoo Panama per se, it's just that Yahoo has some poor editorial policies and Yahoo Panama has created more customer service issues, which just compounds the problem.

Re: The Dirty Secret of Email Marketing and Internet Service Providers

Pat East — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:39:32 -0000

This reminds me of an article from the Silverpop CEO about how "permission" should be replaced with "anticipation."

http://emailmarketing.silverpop.com/archive/200...

Re: I’m not going to Barnes and Nobles Today!

Pat East — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:35:48 -0000

Happy Birthday! It's been a while...let's catch up over coffee!

Re: Independence Day (from Billy Mays, ShamWow and HeadOn)

Pat East — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 10:18:31 -0000

I hate the Head On commercials, but the stuff works. Anytime I have a really bad headache, I'll use it and no more headache!

Re: http://blog.inc.com/sold/2008/01/no_more_cold_calls.html

Pat East — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 03:24:23 -0000

Greg's post is spot on. Given the economic downturn that's happening, more businesses need to prioritize their marketing and sales strategies. Just because cold calls may have worked in the past doesn't mean you should continue to do them. Greg said that cold calls "don't give enough of a return" not that they don't give any return at all. Heed his advice, start thinking *now* of the future clients that your current clients can refer and you'll be that much better off when everyone else is still scrambling to recover.

Re: Update: Top SEO Blogs by RSS Subscribers

Pat East — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:07:15 -0000

Would love to see PPC Hero (www.ppchero.com) added...we have just a shade over 1,000 subscribers!