We have all heard the cliché’s by now:  perception is reality or you only get one chance to make a good first impression.  In my opinion, clichés become just, that because they are so true.  When it comes to search engine marketing, these clichés apply across the board.  If you build a nice looking site, have great search engine rankings in both the natural and paid listings, then you can position your business no matter how small, as the big player in the market because perception is reality.  If you are managing a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign and drive traffic to a poor landing page with no relevancy, little or no content and no action items for the visitor, most likely they will bounce from that page. You only get one chance to make a good first impression with that visitor, so make sure it is engaging and memorable.

Next time you are developing an online strategy for marketing your business, think about those concepts.  In the online arena, you do not have to be intimidated by the 800 lb gorilla in your industry.  In fact, some of those large, “well established” companies make the biggest mistakes in online marketing.  They may have the huge TV budget and the 50,000 square foot showroom, 20 VP’s and 1000 sales people…but in online marketing, and PPC campaigns in particular, every business is fighting for the same limited space.  If you build it they will come is a great line from the movie Field of Dreams, but in online marketing that is not true.  In reality, if you build it and build it well, make sure you drive relevant traffic to your site and you can compete with any other business online.

In addition, be sure to think about what “face” you want to put on when a visitor arrives, because as I mentioned, you only get one chance to make a good first impression.  Your landing page should be relevant to the keywords you used in the ads that generated that visitor.  Make sure the page loads quickly, has optimized, keyword rich content, and most importantly a clear call to action.  This is your chance to make a good first impression, so don’t blow it by haphazardly choosing a landing page with a poor design, slow load time, and no calls to action.  The downside could be huge if you don’t make a good first impression with your landing page.  For years to come those previous visitors may be searching online and possibly pass you by, because their impression of your business was uninspiring.

When creating an online campaign, much time is spent selecting keywords and even more time writing ad copy, but very little time deciding which match type to use for keywords.  Recently, I was working with a client who asked MoreVisibility to create a fresh, exciting search engine marketing campaign (SEM).  When I spoke to the client with respect to their previous SEM efforts, I was surprised to discover they had not been utilizing any variations in match type; in fact, they had only been using broad match.

Broad match keywords display the widest range of search query results possible.  Broad match will allow the keywords to be displayed in any order; with other search terms before, after or in between your keywords.  For example, if you were a farmer looking to create an SEM campaign for avocados; you may choose to use ‘avocado’ as a keyword.  However, if ‘avocado’ is used as a broad match keyword, the interpretations are endless and the search query results are limitless; even if a searcher is looking for an ‘avocado colored sweater’ or someone looking for ‘how to plant avocado trees’ then your ad would be displayed.  Typically, broad match keywords produce huge numbers of impressions and clicks, but very few conversions; especially when the search terms are general.

Phrase match keyword types are a useful match type, as they prevent words from being inserted between the keywords when a search query is conducted.  You can indicate phrase match keywords by putting keywords in quotation marks when adding it to Google.  Phrase matched keywords will not allow words to be inserted between your quoted keywords.  For example, more appropriate keywords may be “buy avocados” or “fresh avocados.”  These keywords are more targeted and when implemented as a phrase match type, reduce the amount of superfluous clicks and irrelevant searches.

Exact match is another useful tactic which prevent any words to come before or after the specified keyword or keywords when performing a search query.  Exact matching can be implemented by adding brackets to the keyword; for example by enclosing the keyword [avocado] inside the brackets, it is considered to be an exact match keyword.  This will then cause your ad to not be displayed for such queries such as, ‘avocado sweater’ as the keyword [avocado] is set for exact match status.  Exact matches will produce fewer clicks and impressions, but lead to more qualified visitors.

While campaigns have many components, one essential feature that should not be ignored is the keyword match type.  An effective match type will reduce the amount of unnecessary clicks, and leave more money for your advertising budget.  An effective SEM campaign utilizes a combination of different match types to target specific searchers and limit uninterested parties.

During a discussion on the next big thing in internet search here in the SEO department at Morevisibility, we speculated on the future of the Open Directory. Back in the day, search directories were the first real way that websites were found on the internet and even after the web crawlers made their debut, directories were important. Those days are long gone. Does this auger the demise of the Open Directory? Well, maybe not. For one thing, as sophisticated as all the new technology and search engine algorithms are, most successful search engines still rely on human opinion. It has been suggested that the rise of social media harks back to the early early days of the internet when word of mouth was the way that a site was found – that it’s all part of a cycle of search technology development. With the rise of social media, word of mouth recommendations are fast becoming a way for sites to be found by visitors. Sites like www.stumbleupon.com and www.coolsiteoftheday.com are extending this by letting us take recommendations from strangers as though they were our friends. So, if search technology is working in a cycle, will directories assume more importance in the years to come? Maybe not for standard text search but it seems to me that human editing would be invaluable for determining keyword relevance of images and videos. In fact, Google already employs this to a certain degree with Google Image Labeler. It’s more like a game at the moment and even though the presence of an opponent does make it a little more valid, how well it works to really assign relevance to images remains to be seen. Is there a place for image and video directories in the internet of the future? Given all the new technological breakthroughs lately, this is definitely a question that is up in the air but a great place to find out more is by reading this article: http://blogs.mediapost.com/search_insider/?p=776