I missed Andy Beal’s post about online advertising in Australia. It’s worth a read as he links to an emarketer study saying that Australian advertisers plan to allocate 22% of their marketing budgets to online advertising.

I particularly like Andy’s last paragraph:

“Anyway, having recently returned from Sydney, I can tell you that the Australian SEM industry is getting ready to explode. There are a few smart SEMs down there, that can watch their American SEM cousins for the latest practices and bury their competition.”

It’s a definite advantage being able to watch what is happening in America. We have to wait a bit for the latest tools and research in Australia but it’s less competitive and there’s a lot to be gained from seeing what is about to happen before it hits with full force.

PPC advertisers learn how to target their ad copy to get qualified clicks. There are recognised principles such as repeating the keywords in the headline, using words your target customers respond to and inserting a call to action. In addition, good advertisers test different ads on an ongoing basis to improve the ROI. Good click through rates are rewarded with a higher quality score which means cheaper costs per click. The incentives are there to put the work into targeted, compelling ad copy.

So do the same principles apply to the organic listings? More people click on the organic listings anyway and there is no cost per click but there is still competition for each click. There’s no point having a good ranking and then not capitalising on the opportunity to then attract targeted visitors in the same way that paid advertisers do.

If you take a look at this listing from Wotif in the organic listings, it has a lot in common with the paid ads. The search query is for “mooloolaba accommodation”.

Compare this with another unpaid listing for the same search query.

In both cases the two lines of text after the title is from the description meta tag for the web page. Wotif have worded their description to state their offer and attract clicks. The second example is a throw back to when meta tags were important for good rankings and were stuffed with keywords in order to help this aim. Now Google ignores the meta tags for ranking purposes so its time to optimise them for targeted clicks and not for the search engines.

1. Every web page should have a unique description designed to attract targeted visitors.
2. Keep the description short enough so that all the information is displayed. Google displays about 155 characters including spaces.
3. Be aware of how the title and description work together in order to maximum the available space.
4. You don’t have complete control over whether Google uses the description meta tag or uses something else instead such as text from the web page itself. If the keywords from the users search query are in the description meta tag then it is likely that this is what will be used. Therefore, even though keywords in the description are unimportant from a ranking point of view, it does affect when the description is displayed.
5. Test to see what gets the best results.

Sophie Wegat, the owner of Think Prospect in Melbourne, answers a question on search marketing in Australia as part of an interview series profiling women in Internet marketing.

“What differences do you see between optimizing for Australia and optimizing for the US?”

I hadn’t seen Sophie’s blog before but just subscribed.

The “reasons why I blog” meme has been doing the rounds lately and even though the same themes keep coming up it’s still interesting to read the perspectives of fellow bloggers. Randfish at seomoz wrote one of the best responses.

Here are my top 5 reasons for blogging:

1. Establish Credibility

Writing about search engine marketing topics, and pay-per-click in particular, gives me the opportunity to demonstrate knowledge and attitude / enthusiasm. It’s a good way to show experience, particularly to prospective clients.

2. Explore Topics and Clarify My Thoughts

Often when I’m writing a post I’ll combine my own experience with some further research into the topic. I find that this process, and the discipline required to try and write something of value, and write it clearly, gives me a better insight into whatever topic I’m covering. If I get comments, positive or negative, which make me think further then so much the better.

3. Marketing and New Business Opportunities

This is connected with my first reason “establish credibility”. Blogs are a great way to get noticed, get more website traffic and establish a brand. One of the things that has happened since I started blogging is an invitation to have posts from my blog syndicated on the ientry network. Blogging is a good way to get this kind of recognition.

4. Feel Part of a Community

I mostly work by myself and it suits me to do so. I like the focus and concentration that comes with a quiet, solitary work environment. However I’m not entirely anti-social :). Online communities are a good place to form peer relationships, share ideas, have the occasional spat and generally avoid the feeling that you’re in a vacuum.

5. Improve Skills

I’ve already mentioned that I believe blogging improves my industry skills. There’s also a whole lot to learn in order to blog effectively. It can be frustrating at times and I’m definitely still learning but I like the idea of improving skills in this area. I bought this book a few weeks ago and really recommend it. There are also some great blogs on blogging.

What about you? If you blog I’d really like to hear your reasons. Or anything that’s stopping you from blogging if you don’t have a blog.

Google AdWords provides four keyword matching choices, “broad”, “phrase”, “exact” and “negative”.

Broad matching is the default option in that it requires no special formatting. There are advantages to using broad match but some disadvantages as well.

Broad Match Pluses:

• more impressions and more traffic
• a wider variety of keyword phrases can be targeted without having to add them all into the campaign
• can be used to find additional, popular keyword phrases if you examine the logs to find the full phrases

Broad Match Minuses:

• not as targeted - you can cover a wider range of searches with one broad match but you can’t make the ads as relevant to very targeted searchers
• expanded match can give unwanted matches
• poor targeting can result in a lower click through rate which will in turn result in a low quality score
• broad matching will not be delivered on all matches for new accounts with no quality score history

Strategies:

1. Use all 3 matching types to start with and then act on the information the results deliver.

- Use an analytics program such as Google analytics to discover additional keyword phrases from your broad matches. Add them as exact matches in a new ad group and improve the targeting.

- Delete keywords which don’t perform.

- Use different bids for each keyword matching option. Keep in mind that you may have to pay more for high converting, very targeted exact matches.

2. Use broad matching for longer phrases rather than single words. Where phrases overlap use separate ad groups and negative keywords to control which keyword phrase is matched. For example, if you have broad match keywords “web design” and “custom web design”, a search for “custom web design” could be matched with either phrase. Google will not necessarily select the most relevant phrase so if you want more control and better targeting then add a negative keyword for “custom” in the ad group containing “web design”.

Ad Group 1

web design

-custom

Ad Group 2

custom web design

3. Use dynamic keyword insertion to improve the targeting for broad matches