vital marketing

You’ve probably noticed when searching with Google, often PDFs come up in the search results. That’s because Google indexes PDF files, and PDFs represent a large volume of the content on the web.

However, most people don’t think about optimizing their PDFs for the search engines. That’s unfortunate because it’s easy to optimize your PDFs for Google indexing and searching.

First, make sure you include TITLE, DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDs attributes in your PDF file. You can also add the AUTHOR and other fields as desired—but TITLE is essential!

You can supply these attributes (tags) with Adobe or other tools that you use to create the PDF. Or you can always modify these attributes in existing PDFs by using a freeware utility like PDF Info.

Keep in mind that the TITLE field is what Google uses as the heading in its search results. If you don’t have a TITLE, then it will just display the first chunk of text in encounters in the PDF document—which is often not ideal. So always include a useful TITLE tag.

Also if you want a search engine to find your content based on keywords or key phrases, be sure you include those terms in prominent locations in your PDF document, such as the page titles and table of contents.

For more information on PDF files and SEO, here are a couple of useful links on Adobe’s site:

• Offer search tools a helping hand
• Make your PDFs work well with Google (and other search engines)

This week Google added a privacy link on their home page and results pages.

Here’s an excerpt from Google’s blog about the new link:

“So, today we’re making a homepage change by adding a link to our privacy overview and policies. Google values our users’ privacy first and foremost. Trust is the basis of everything we do, so we want you to be familiar and comfortable with the integrity and care we give your personal data. We added this link both to our homepage and to our results page to make it easier for you to find information about our privacy principles. The new “Privacy” link goes to our Privacy Center, which was revamped earlier this year to be more straightforward and approachable, with videos and a non-legalese overview to make sure you understand in basic terms what Google does, does not, will, and won’t, do in regard to your personal information.”

Like Google, all web marketers should include a privacy statement on their web site, clearly stating if you will share any customer data and if so, how. Make the policy easy to understand and make it easy to find on your web site—a best practice is to include it in the footer of the web site so that it appears on every page.

Plus as an added bonus, the search engines like privacy statements! It makes your site appear more legitimate and professional—include one and you’ll be rewarded with higher ranking.

Of course not everyone needs a privacy statement quite as sophisticated as $168B Google. Something like WEconectIT’s Privacy Statement is sufficent for many organizations.

If you need help crafting your policy statement, check out The Direct Marketing Association’s Privacy Policy Generator. Simply fill out a few questions and this useful online tool will generate a privacy web page that you can post on your site.

This week InformationWeek reports that Adobe announced their new ‘Searchable SWF technology.” They will be distributing a “search-engine optimized” version of Flash Player to Google and Yahoo.

“When a search spider hits an SWF Flash file, the special Flash Player will start up. This Flash Player will navigate every state of Flash files like a virtual user would, finding and helping the search engines index text and links along the way and searching through otherwise unlinked files that the Flash file points to.”

No doubt this will impact Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) once Google and Yahoo start indexing all the flash-only sites that have so far been invisible to search spiders. However, there are still serious limitations—some that will be annoying to web users—so there’s still no reason to race to Flash as a primary web site development tool.

“Still, only text and links will be searchable. Graphics and video, including FLV files, still won’t be able to be indexed properly, and there’s no capability to search and index metadata embedded in Flash files (even though, Adobe says, SWF and FLV files have metadata fields) or to allow people to link to specific content within a Flash file in order to make search results more relevant. Also, when someone clicks on a search result, they’ll be taken to the beginning of a Flash file and will have to navigate their way to the content they are seeking.”

Here is another article titled, “Caution urged following Google Flash changes” that outlines a few additional concerns.

If you’re not already using Google Analytics, you should give it a try. It’s
an incredible service!

Google Analytics analyzes traffic for one or more of your websites and
provides easy-to-understand reports on your visitors—how many, where they come
from, how they found and use your site, what converts them into customers, and
much more.

Here’s just a few good reasons to use Google Analytics:

• It’s FREE—spend on marketing, not on web analytics.
• It’s easy to use—simple enough for novice marketers, while delivering all
  of the capabilities that experienced web analytics professionals expect.
  It’s a hosted service that runs on the same servers that power Google. Just
  paste the Google Analytics tracking code into each of your website pages and
  tracking begins immediately.
• It’s powerful—it has many of the features you’d expect from a high-end
  analytics offering. From large, high-traffic corporate sites to small sites,
  Google Analytics delivers consistent service.
• It’s integrated with AdWords—if you have a Google AdWords PPC account, you can
  use Google Analytics directly from the AdWords interface. Google Analytics
  also calculates ROI metrics from automatically imported cost and keyword
  tracking data, saving you time.
   

Track your blog with Google Analytics
I’m currently using Google Analytics to track my WordPress and Blogger Blog.

Thanks to Andy Wibbels for his simple instructions for tracking these three popular blogs with Google Analytics:

• Blogger
• TypePad
• Wordpress

Google Analytics Dashboard

When designing a web landing page, have you ever struggled over which headline is more compelling?  Which graphics are better aligned with your message?  What should the call to action be?

Google has an answer.  They are making Google Website Optimizer, a multivariate testing application, available free to their Adwords customers.  With this tool you can determine the absolute best combination of web page elements (headlines, graphics, fonts, text, etc.) that leads to conversion success.

What is Multivariate Testing?
Unlike the more common A/B split testing that compares the effectiveness of two completely different web pages, multivariate testing provides a way to quickly test many page designs.  By rotating all of the possible page elements and tracking visitor responses, the multivariate approach determines the most effective combination preferred by your audience.

With this tool you can test up to eight elements at a time. So as an example you might consider:

• Headline (2 different options)
• Sub Headline (3 different options)
• Image (3 different options)
• Call to action (2 different options).

Now if you had to design different pages for all of these combinations, you would have to build and track 36 different pages (2 x 3 x 3 x 2).  Of course this would be too difficult, so you wouldn’t do it.

That’s the power of the Google Website Optimizer – you only need a single page and Google will rotate your elements, track the results and ultimately suggest the most effective design.  To see it in action, view the Google Website Optimizer Overview Demo.

Does it work?  Just read a few of the Website Optimizer Customer Testimonials.

After using Website Optimizer, we have a very good idea of what works, and what doesn’t, and what we should do now. Not using it would be almost criminal.”
- Ilan Klein, Park Slope Softworks

Website Optimizer is another home run for Google. The instructions are clear and tagging the sites is simple and completely unobtrusive.”
- Bill Cronin, E-Commerce Manager for Vermont Teddy Bear

The ease of set up, the reporting…all typically “Googlian” in its simplicity and effectiveness.”
- Frank Malsbenden, Shoeline.com

Multivariate testing was once affordable to only the largest companies… but it’s now available to everyone.  So sign up for this free service and start optimizing your landing pages.

If you’re not already using Google AdWords Editor to manage your AdWords campaigns, you should check it out.

AdWords Editor is a free, downloadable application for managing your AdWords Campaigns. A few things I like about it are:

• You can download and manage your campaigns offline
• It’s easier and more powerful than the online interface
• It offers new tools for grouping keywords and removing duplicates
• You can export campaigns into a variety of formats
• You can circulate proposed changes and get feedback

Grouping Keywords and Removing Duplicates
To get the best performance out of Google AdWords, you should create tightly knit Ad Groups with keywords, ad text and destination click-thru pages all based on a common theme. This makes your ads and click-thru pages most relevant to the visitor.

To help you with this, the Keyword Grouper takes your existing list of keywords and intelligently divides them into smaller Ad Groups based on common themes. You can then add or remove words from the list of common terms or organize your keywords around other themes. Next you can create related ad text for the new Ad Groups or just use existing ad text from within your account.

The Find Duplicate Keywords tool locates keywords that are repeated across your account, specific campaigns or ad groups.
When I used this tool I had several keywords unintentionally appearing in two ad groups – so I removed the keywords from my ad groups that were not quite as relevant as the primary ad group.

Unnecessary duplicate keywords can complicate your account management, skew performance statistics and drive visitors to less relevant ads and click-thru pages.

Exporting and Sharing Ads
AdWords Editor allows you to export your entire Account, a single Campaign or a single Ad Group into a number of formats:

• CSV – Share a spreadsheet containing your account information with someone who doesn’t use the AdWords Editor.
• HTML – Ideal for viewing your text ads and keywords together, along with campaign and ad group settings.
• Export for Archiving – gives you the future option of restoring your account to its present state.
• Export for Sharing – Allows you to send your changes to other AdWords Editor users for review. They’ll be able to see your changes, accept or reject them, and add comments.

Don’t Forget to Synchronize
Since AdWords Editor works offline, you’ll need to Post Changes when you’re ready to upload and activate your updates in Google.

Also if you’re not the only one making changes to your Google AdWords Campaigns and Ad Groups, when you launch the editor you’ll want to click on Get Recent Changes in the toolbar. This will download any changes that occurred in your AdWords account since the last time you downloaded it to AdWords Editor. When you download the updates, what you’ll notice is:

• Downloaded changes are green.
• Unposted local changes are purple.
• Conflicts between downloaded and unposted changes are red.

You’ll also want to refresh statistics frequently. You can download recent performance statistics any time by selecting a Sats Interval in the tool bar. You’re limited to statistics for yesterday, the Last 7 Days or Last 30 Days. So if you want to view performance statistics for a different time interval, you’ll need to jump back over to Google AdWords online.

Just Try it!
If you’re using Google AdWords, you’ll want use this new tool for managing your campaigns. It has more functionality and you’ll find your more productive — especially for mass changes, additions and collaborating with others.

Remember, it’s FREE so download it and give it a try. And then the next time you’re offline and have a great AdWords idea…you’ll be able to capture it and later upload when you next connect!