Landing Page – An active webpage where customers will ‘land’ when they click your ad. The web address for this page is often called a ‘destination URL’ or ‘clickthrough URL.’

Below is a list of 7 deadly sins for landing page designs. The list was taken from a webinar from Tim Ash, a consultant from Google.

Have you committed one of the “7 deadly sins of landing page design?”

1. Unclear Call to Action
   Ensure that traffic is sent to a page where the desired action is clearly defined. If you wish for them to book a room night, have a large visible button that allows the customer to book a room night.
2. Too Many Visual Distractions
   A page filled with too many visual distractions, whether its photos of products or flashing banners or AdSense ads, will likely not convert as well. Keep the page simple, clean, and to the point.
3. Too Much Text
   A landing page should not be text heavy. Keep sentences short and simple, and convey your message using bullet points.
4. Not Keeping Promises
   Your AdCopy says: Buy 2 get 1 free, but if this same offer cannot be found on the landing page, you are not keeping that promise. If you have an attractive offer in your AdCopy, make sure that it is easily found on the landing page.
5. Long Forms
   Keep forms as short and concise as possible. Only include fields where it’s absolutely essential for the existing transaction.
6. Invisible Risk Reducers
   If your business is accredited by the BBB, or if your website is hacker safe and tested on a daily basis, be sure to include these logos above the fold.
7. Trust Indicators
   If your business is highly rated or raved about by another company of trust, place that logo above the fold as well. For example, if Conde Nast named your hotel as one of the “Top 500 Hotels in the World”, adding this trust indicator will surely help increase trust, and hopefully conversion.

We are Google Adword Professionals and we can help you implement a successful search engine marketing campaign. Contact us through the blog or on our website, SalesOverNight.com. If you’re company is in the medical industry check out of dedicated medical marketing website, LEVELTWO | Medical.

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As you type into the Google search box, Google Suggest guesses what you are typing and offers suggestions. In the example above, I typed “dallas den” and Google suggested “dallas dentists.”

It works by those amazing Google algorithms that use a wide range of information to predict what you are typing into the search bar. It’s a mashup between the overall popularity of various searches and the frequency of the search. The trending topics make a big difference in how these suggestions are ranked. For example, as of this morning the hot trends in the US are “home run derby 2009 winner,” “the bechelorette finale spoilers,” and “wbcn.”

You can dig down into trending topics to see the search volume index over the past 24 hours. For example, let’s look at the last 24 hours of “home run derby 2009 winner.”

You can see that there was a spike at 8pm (PDT) that trailed off late into the night, but shot way up this morning. Understanding trends like these is important for building your search engine marketing campaign.

Since Google Suggest relies on Google Trends, the current events will guide how people search for answers. If you are an advertiser that sells home run derby memorabilia, you might receive a tremendous amount of clicks over a short period of time, but the majority of those clicks would not return sales because they are visitors looking for news coverage, they are not interested in buying a coffee mug.

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As a search marketing professional, misspelled search terms are not surprising to us, but our readers may find it comical that a large percentage of searches performed are misspelled. For example take a look at Yahoo’s list of some of the more common misspelled searches.

Recent Misspelled Yahoo Searches

• Swan Flu (for Swine Flu)
• Susan Boil (for “Britain’s Got Talent” contender Susan Boyle)
• Brack Obama (for U.S. President Barack Obama)
• Sonia Sotomeyer (for Supreme Court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor)
• Rachel Ray (for Food Network host Rachael Ray)
• Paperview boxing (for cable programming pay-per-view boxing)
• Amtrack (for train system Amtrak)
• Wallmart (for retailer Wal-Mart)
• Farrah Faucet (for actress Farrah Fawcett)
• Rod Steward (for singer Rod Stewart)
• Arlene Specter (for Senator Arlen Specter)
• “Dancing With the Starts” (for ABC reality competition Dancing With the Stars)
• Bea Author” (for the late comedian Bea Arthur)
• Brittany Spears (for singer Britney Spears)
• Chris Allen (for “American Idol” winner Kris Allen)
• Configure worm (for computer virus Conficker worm)
• Mysapce (for MySpace)

While it is entertaining to think that people are searching for “paperview boxing”, targeting commonly misspelled keywords in your search campaign is key to successful search engine marketing. The majority of your clicks will be from the correct spelling, but for the few people that misspell a keyword you, as an advertiser, will be able to show them a relevant ad while the other competitors’ ads will not show because they are only advertising on the correct spelling.

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Just this week hulu announced their new desktop viewing software. It features a sleek new look that’s optimized for use with standard Windows Media Center or Apple remote controls, allowing you to navigate Hulu’s entire library with just six buttons. While some video distribution sites might be worried about their place in the market, we are excited to see yet another step closer to the internet becoming integrated with our operating systems.

With all of the online applications now available it is not too far in the future that the internet will become the platform for all of our personal computing tasks. Maybe we’re already there! Webmail, online calendars, invoicing, faxing, making phone calls, and of course the huge popularity of iPhone apps that integrate an online cloud computing system with the mobile software.

You can do it all on the internet. If the future of personal computing is online, that’s where businesses need to focus their marketing efforts. Facebook is replacing your address book and Twitter is replacing texting. As the social networking industry works its way into our daily lives, businesses can’t afford to not be apart of the shifting technology. The search market is integrating with the social market, search is universal!

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Finding a search marketing company is easy. Just do a quick search and you’ll find tons of companies demanding that they are the best. So you’ve find ‘em, the hard part is choosing which marketing agency to use for your search marketing campaign.

We’ve put together 10 questions to ask your search marketing company before you sign that contract. You’ve let the salesmen do the talking, now it’s time for you to ask some questions of your own.

1. Does the contract include ongoing maintenance? The search marketing world is always changing and if you stand still you’ll get left behind.
2. Are they certified search engine marketing professionals for the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN)?
3. Each campaign should be custom tailored for each client. Ask them if they use any template campaigns.
4. Ask if they use any blackhat tricks. Blackhat are methods that are not honest and could result in getting your website banned.
5. An honest search marketing agency will never guarantee conversions, only a specific range of traffic increase can be guaranteed. A well planned campaign will yield a return on investment, but there’s no way to predict the level of activity.
6. Ask to see example campaign landing pages or websites. What’s your first impression? Would you buy it?
7. Do they offer on-demand campaign reporting or do they email you a spreadsheet once a month?
8. Do they make use of multiple search engines? A strong SEM campaign will be diverse.
9. Be wary if they say “yes” to everything. A successful search campaign requires a minimum level of investment. If they say that $200 a month will get your website ranked first in Google you might want to get a second opinion.
10. Do they track everything about your campaign? This includes the number of people who see your ads, the number of clicks, what they do once they reach your landing page, and how many of those visitors fill out a form or call your phone number. Call tracking is key to search engine marketing.

Honesty is the best policy. We know there are a lot of other marketing agencies out there, but no matter who you choice it’s important that you are informed about what you’re getting.

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Question: When is the best time to deliver an ad to a prospect?

Answer: During the research phase.

So how do you do it? As business owners, how can you actively deliver your marketing message at just the right time?

Great news! There are two approaches.

#1 – Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
When a prospect types in a search phrase into a search engine that contains keywords referring to your industry niche, using search engine marketing you can deliver a relevant ad directly to them right when they are in the correct buying phase.

In this example the prospect is looking for weight loss surgery. That’s a pretty broad search phrase so you may not want to spend money on an ad for someone just in the interest phase.

So in this example the prospect is much more specific in what they are searching for and they have entered the research phase and that’s when you can deliver a powerful ad specifically tailored to their search.

Learn more about search engine marketing.

#2 – Social Media Marketing (SMM)
When a prospect searches on a social network for a specific product or service unless you have a profile setup on that specific platform they wouldn’t see your ads. By developing a social campaign that targets searches outside of the search engine realm you will gather traffic that would not find you using a search engine.

Another exciting aspect is that you can directly contact a prospect as they begin the research phase. For example if someone on Twitter asks:

You can set up an alert that tells you exactly when someone uses any keyword you specify. In this example, one of our clients wants to know anytime someone mentions their back pain. So as soon as this tweet popped up, they were able to respond with a link to their herniated disc section of their website. Now that’s powerful marketing.

Learn more about social media marketing.

LEVELTWO

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The other day I watched over the shoulder of my wife as she was searching for a local shoe retailer. She opened up Firefox and up popped Google.com as her homepage. The surprise came when she typed the name of the retailer into the Google search bar rather than just typing the URL (which she actually knew for memory).

I didn’t really think much more about it until I ran across a blog post on MarketingProfs that stated a company’s corporate homepage is Google.com.

People are starting to view the Google search bar as their URL entry box. Instead of typing “www.zappos.com” people are simply typing the world “Zappos” into a search form.

This is a key point to remember for businesses engaged in internet marketing.

1. Do you rank first for your company name?
2. Are there any negative comments that show up for your company name?
3. Are your competitors advertising using your company name as a keyword?

If you are not seeing the results you want when you search your own business name you can

1. Advertise on Google using your company’s name
2. Launch a social networking campaign focused on branding and reputation management
3. Optimize your website for search engine ranking

These methods are proven to work and you can often see results within days of launch. But you don’t have to take our word for it. Take a look at some other points made in the article.

A brands biggest concern…should be the negative pages that show up in the results organically. Those are the listings that are much less in Google’s control and more in the hands of consumers/brands.

Just because there are people who are writing about your product on Yelp and GetSatisfaction, doesn’t mean you have to sit back and watch your search results get contaminated. No one is barred from producing content on the web. A brand has just as much right to talk about their great qualities and respond to those who disagree.

Creating great content around your product in pivotal to your organic search success. A big part of Google’s secret formula for organic search is traffic. If you build it (something great), they will come. The better something is, the more traffic it gets, the closer it will rest to your ideal search results.

Creating a small 2 to 3 page microsite is not enough. Engaging your industry through social media and social networking is how brands succeed at reputation management and internet marketing.

Marketing Profs – ‘A company’s corporate homepage is Google.com’

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Google’s Inside AdWords blog has a interesting post about using filters with the new interface.

Filters allow you to look at just the data you want within your account. You can use filters throughout your account and save them for later use.

They give examples of how filters can be used to find high performing keywords by filtering based on CTR and conversion rate.

Another tip is a way to monitor all pending or disapproved ads. There’s lots of ways to use filters and their short explanation can help new users better understand the usefulness.

Inside AdWords: All about filters

We’ll be putting a blog post together to help give more details about AdWords filter tips. Stay tuned.

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Pay-per-click – A great method to drive lots of visitors to your website that are interested in your products or services.

After the click – Understanding what those visitors are doing once they reach your website, specfically if they are not calling you or filling out a form.

5 reasons to track after the click:

1. The tracking cookie is saved on the visitor’s computer for 30 days after the visit so you can know if they click now and return to your website later.
2. Return on Investment (ROI) is the most important metric. Your cost per click or click through rate might be great, but unless you know how much you are making for every dollar you invest, the other metrics are useless.
3. You can expand on keywords that provide the most ROI and generate even more profit.
4. Keywords that contain a brand or company name may provide a lot of traffic, but when you track the ROI of these keywords you might find that they provide little to no profit.
5. After you know the visitors that are taking some kind of action on your website, you can then determine where your most active markets are located geographically and develop a campaign specifically targeting those buyers.

In order to track after the click activity (using Google Adwords) you will need to make use of the Conversion Tracking feature (pictured below).

The set up is really simple. The first step is to name your conversion action.

TIP: If your forms all send the same formated message and there is no way for you to tell where each specific form came from, it’s important be very specific when naming your conversion. In the example we named our conversion “Landing Page B Contact Form” because we have 4 different landing pages for this client and we want to know which page is getting more leads.

The rest of the setup is really straight forward so we’ll skip to the next page after you save the action and get your conversion code.

On this page you are presented with the code to place on your “thank you” page.

Read related blog posts about Search Engine Marketing

• Effective Landing Pages, 7 Tips
• What is Search Engine Marketing?
• How to do Keyword Research for Search Marketing
• What is Dynamic Keyword Insertion?
• What is Clickthrough Rate and Cost Per Click?
• How to make your Website more Trustworthy
• 4 Reasons why Traffic Quality is Important

Ask us a question on Twitter @LEVELTWO

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Great tips on how to use Google Analytics to get the most out of Google Adwords.

Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Find the Best Keywords
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Location Targeting
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Find Poor Performing Campaigns and Keywords
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Placement Targeting
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Identifying High Spenders
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Conversion Funnels
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Tracking Ecommerce with Google Analytics

via Adwords blog

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