FTC Do Not Track Policy: SEO & PPC Implications / News Roundup

A few weeks ago the Federal Trade Commision made a call for a "Do Not Track" option regarding online privacy.  We all remember the Do Not Call list that many of us added our numbers to, avoiding many irritating telemarketing calls during dinner. 

Many articles were published in the last few weeks regarding this topic but we didn't see a whole lot about how this would affect PPC advertisers, SEOs, and those who use Analytics software to track visitor behaviour, conversions, repeat visitors and more.

Alot of questions come up:

Is this the end of website analytics, Adwords conversion tracking, bounce rates, time on site and geo-targeting?  Or is this a step toward protecting people privacy so that you don't have to worry that Facebook will change its privacy settings again and confuse you into having all your info across the internet?  Its really too early to tell.

We though we'd select a few articles about this new FTC proposal.  They are kind of all over the place in their opinions. 

If you have any comments on how this will affect SEO, PPC, Analytics or online marketing in any way we'd love to hear your thoughts.  Here are a few news articles on this subject:

USA Today:  'Do Not Track' online privacy measure under consideration

USA Today:  Don't Track technology is simple, experts say

Chicago Tribune:  FTC proposes 'do not track' list to protect internet users

bnet.com:  The FTC's "Do Not Track" Proposal Already Having an Effect

Reuters:  Why Web Giants would benefit from a 'do not track' policy

ITBusinessEdge:  legislators regulators consider do not track mechanism

Rostin Ventures:  FTC Do Not Track List Guidelines Support SEM SEO Strategy, Mobile SEO & Social Media Marketing

Free Tool that Automatically Counts Title & Descripton Tag Lengths

No doubt you agree that any tool that simplifies or speeds things up in doing SEO is always welcome.  Here's a great little tool that you can use when writing title & description tags.  It automatically keeps track of how long these tags are so they fall within Google's guidelines.  After all you want to have nice well formatted tags and avoid the dreaded search results where your tags trail off...

You can find the tool by clicking To use this cool too click here.   This page courtesy of the good people at INT.  Best of all its free and works right on the page!

Do you have any suggestions on tools to speed title and description writing?

Good ad copy or technical terms in your tags-Which is Best for SEO?

You've probably searched for an item, be it a new hard drive, a cable for your HDTV or maybe you were trying to find an energy saving bulb to lower your bills.  You likely saw a alot of technical jargon in the search results.  That's great if you know exactly what you are looking for, aka a 1TB Seagate external hard drive, etc.  But if you are trying to find which bulbs are more energy efficient or environmentally friendly often all the technical jargon in the search results are useless to you. 

Turning the tables a bit, if you're the owner/marketer of a site what should you write in your title & description tags when trying to get rankings for your product or service- the technical specs or ad copy and keywords that are less technical and more targeted to solutions?  Really, which is best?  This post is about the keywords that are used in the meta keywords, especially the title tags as far as more technical terms vs. non technical. 

The object of the title tag is twofold: 

1.  to rank as high as possible for relevant keywords that convert and

2. to get a searcher, really as many searchers as possible, to click on your search result instead of your competitors.  This may include a feature/benefit and a call to action.

 The keywords that are included in your title tags are the ones that have been proven to not only drive traffic but result in sales in your PPC campaigns.   The wording of the title tag is also designed to get the searcher to click on your search result instead of your competitors.  Both of these goals including a feature/benefit and call to action all have to be fit into only a 67 character title tag limit.  The keywords you include from your research doing PPC may seem a bit more generic than the actual technical specs of a product there are couple of things to keep in mind:

1.  As the business owner, you have a much more in depth knowledge than most searchers as you are the product expert.  It may seem tempting to put in all technical specs.  However the person who types in a search is often trying to either get information or solve a problem such as "which bulb replaces the bulbs in my living room?"  or "How can I save money on my energy bill?" or "What green options are out there for lighting?" .  Having a title tag that speaks to them may cause them to click on your ad instead of all the others that have technical specs, even if they are in positions 1-3 and you may be in position 6.

2.  You will have plenty of opportunities to speak to those searchers who are interested in technical specs in two places if you want to:  1.   Your description tag.  2. (More importantly) The page they land on after clicking on your result.

Another thing to keep in mind- Even though they work together, there are significant differences between PPC  & SEO:

1.  Unlike PPC you aren't spending any money on people who click on your result.   So you want as many people to click on your result than your competitors.  Get them to your site, then let them decide if what you have fulfills their needs.  If it does, great.  If not, they click away and you don't pay a dime.  This is very different from PPC where you want to encourage the right person to click on your ad but discourage others who may not be your target audience because you're paying for all those clicks.

2.  PPC is directly related to the keywords and ad copy you choose.   Your search result  includes your title & description tags along with Google crawling the entire internet (including your site) to find the answer to the searcher's query.  So if a person searches for a more generic term such as "led replacement bulb" you may rank for that.  But if a searcher types in "Nexxus - Array Quantum LED R30 Medium Base Lamp 50w replacement" you can also rank highly if the page you feature this product on your site has this info on it because Google will crawl this page.

It may be for certain items having technical details is relevant.  For instance if you sell well known products such as hard drives having a title of 1TB Seagate external drive with automatic backup- free shipping! may be perfect.  But if your product is not as well known frankly the majority of searchers may not yet know what to type in so their searches will be more generic. 

Bottom line:

With a limited amount of space for your title & description tags a balance is needed.  Balancing the goals of your title tags and achieving maximum results for your business should be the decision maker in this process.

How to Highlight & Find PPC & SEO Keywords Quickly Using Excel

Sometimes the littlest things save the biggest amount of time.  So this will be a quick post on a time saving tip for either SEO's or PPC professionals working in excel.  We all know excel is a fantastic tool.  It seems everytime you use it, there is something new it can do to speed things up or make things easier.  Perhaps no program is better at easily handling thousands of keywords, organizing and rearranging them to interperet data quickly. 

But have you ever downloaded thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of keywords from either Adwords or server logs and wanted to see just a certain segment of them quickly?  For instance you downloaded 20,000 keywords from different campaigns for say, "pet toys" in Adwords and only wanted to find the keywords that contained "dog pet toys".  Or you did the same in downloading your server logs and wanted to do the same.  You could write a complicated formula but here's an easier way (this is for Excel 2007 but its basically the same for the other versions): 

How to Highlight & Find PPC & SEO Keywords Quickly Using Excel

Excel:   Find & Highlight Keywords

Handy for finding CPC, search terms, etc.

1.  Select Row/Rows

2.  Hit Ctrl + F

3.  Enter word(s) you want to find in find field

4.  Click options Button

5.  In the "Replace With" row click Format

6.   Select color you want cells to be highlighted (like yellow)

7.  Click Replace all:  Your cells with these words will be highlighted

8.  Click filter and filter by color to see just the highlighted keywords.

9.  Just click undo to undo this.

That's it!  Please leave a comment if this helped you or you would like further clarification.

Press Releases- Do They Still Impress?

A few years ago putting out a totally SEO'd press release was a great way to get a bunch of links back to your site, thereby getting better rankings in Google for your site.  In addition, the press release itself would get ranked in Google if someone typed in the right keywords.  They go to the press release that links to your site and you get even more traffic.  Does this still work as well today?  And if not, how can a press release help your site out?

As you probably guessed, once someone figured out how well this worked, everyone did this.  They put out lots of badly written, spammy, keyword and link stuffed press releases on sites such as PRweb, PRleap, etc.  They were trying to trying to game Google just for a link or links by just churning out releases that had no real value to a reader..  Google got wise to this and has greatly devalued the links coming from press releases.  So how do you get the most out of press releases today?  Is it even worth the time?

Best Practices for Press Releases

 Really, nowadays in a effort to reduce spam and level the playing field the

idea behind a press release is back to what it should be- Well written, timely, compelling, newsworthy.  If this is the case, it may get picked up by a number of news or other sites and reposted with links back to your site.

 And this is what your press release should be.  Here are a few simple tactics as far as optimizing press releases for maximum possible effect on your site:

1.  Deliver high value to whoever reads it.  As was mentioned, keep it well written, timely, compelling, newsworthy.

2.  Ideas for press releases:  A Press releases can announce a range of news items such as: scheduled events, personal promotions, awards, news products and services, sales and other financial data, accomplishments, etc.

3.  Have the keywords you want people to type into Google in your press release in a natural way.  For instance if you are a Lasik surgeon in Los Angeles, California your potential customer might type into Google "Lasik, LA" or "Lasik, Los Angeles".  Have these keywords in the release a few times but not in a spammy way.

4.  Use anchor text in your press release.  In writing the press release you are often given the opportunity to link to your site.  The actual text that is hyperlinked is the anchor text.  Make sure this text has the keyword phrase (like "Lasik, Los Angeles") linking to a page that has the same keywords in it.  Don't just hyperlink the words "click here" or something like this.  This may not seem like a big deal but it is.  Do a search on Google for info on "anchor text" and how much Google uses it.

5.   Keep your press release to a reasonable size and keep it on topic- you can always write another one later for another topic/subject. 

6.  Email it to some handpicked journalists and bloggers. Personalize the email message. For good measure, submit it to PRWeb, PRLeap, etc.

More great info on press releases:

High PR Web 2.0 Properties for Link Building in SEO