See these tips from Atiwa before you spill coffee on your laptop!
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According to Doubleclick, the average click-through rate for an online ad campaign is .10% . Yes, that’s one-tenth of one percent. Wow, I was surprised. I’ve managed campaigns, my own or others, over the years and while .10% may be average, I certainly don’t consider it good – unless that tiny percentage translates to hundreds of visitors. I expect a campaign to be really worthwhile if it’s getting at least 1.5% click-through and, even then, I’m going to tweak to try to get it higher. I consider it really successful if I can get it to 5% or higher. Of course, all of this is very dependent on the phrase/keyword/brand being advertised. I’ve always felt it’s better to be a big fish in a little pond and if you read this blog regularly, you know that Yahoo! recently issued a whitepaper that said the same thing. Be specific with your ad phrases and demographics. If you advertise on Yahoo!, you’ve probably received their notices about the upcoming merger with Bing. This is going to affect how your ads are displayed and you need to modify your ads accordingly:
Search engines will also be merged, from what I’ve read and this means where as Bing & Yahoo! separately were not a large enough component of total searches to worry about, they will probably account for 25-35% of all searches in the future. Their algorithms (how they decide who ranks highest) are very different. Once they’ve merged their engines, I’ll be spending time analyzing search results to see what they are considering important. If you’re a management client, that may mean some adjustments to your site to make sure you rank well in Bing/Yahoo! as well as Google. If you’re an existing client, i.e. I host your site on my server in Dallas (not my cheap DIY sites), or I manage your website on a monthly basis (mgmt plan), simply comment on this posting and I’ll give you 15 minutes of free SEO analysis on your website. Fine print: One free consultation per billing address. Offer ends August 31. This will be interesting. I’m betting not one client comments, which would really be the utmost complement because it means they rely on me. But I’ll be just as pleased if some do because that will mean some of them care enough to look at this on occasion for whatever reason. (All comments are held for approval, so spammers, just go away now.) Websites are like bread when left out. They get stale. There’s a reason companies change their commercials and brands update their logos from time to time. Consider whether it’s time to update your website and remember that your website should be designed for your visitors – not for you. Even if you just change out a picture or modify the color scheme, it can feel like a new, unexplored site to the visitor who may have seen it several times before. Just an fyi for my clients… I noticed this blog wasn’t coming up and proceeded to spend 3 hours trying to figure out why. Spent some time on the phone with tech support, and we confirmed that the config file looked correct, etc., but it wasn’t until I went to the hosting management screen and then File Manager and then checked the box for the config file, that the database connection was restored and, voila!, it’s back and working again. I recall that with some shopping carts, after you make changes or sometimes “just because”, simply “touching” the config file out on the server will jump start the application again. I just thought you’d like to know you aren’t the only people whose websites or blogs can get screwed up. Misery loves company, I know. Atiwa is an authorized Toshiba repair place and I sent my Toshiba tablet to them and was so incredibly impressed. They called to tell me what they thought was wrong and were very upfront that it might not fix the problem, and continued to keep me updated and, best of all, they fixed it for a most reasonable price. Since my daughter’s (biz partner) Toshiba tablet had also died, we sent it to them, too, after wasting money at Mr. Notebook in Austin. We haven’t gotten that one back yet, but they think they fixed it, too, and – again – for a very reasonable price. At this point, I would highly recommend Atiwa Computing for any laptop repairs, whether Toshiba or not. If you advertise on Yahoo!, you need to start modifying your ads to meet the requirements of Bing. That means shorter titles (ugh!) and one less character available in the description. An advantage to setting up your mail program, such as Outlook, to view text only, no HTML, is that you can more easily spot fraudulent emails. I received an email that said it was from Bank of America, but since I always view the text version, I saw that the email was really from: From: “Bank of America”<webmaster@dut-leipzig.de> And I’m pretty sure that Bank of America’s webmaster isn’t in Germany (.de). NEVER ever click a link in an email from a financial institution or any company that has your financial or credit card information. Always go to a website directly by typing the URL in the Address bar of your browser. A recent study by Yahoo! confirms what I’ve said for years: it’s better to bid on very specific phrases than generic terms. So if you have an Adwords or Yahoo! advertising program, go for those specific products or services when listing your keywords. Be a big fish in a little pond! You’ll get caught more often – in a good way. |
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