aimClear Search Marketing Blog

With over 71 million blogs worldwide it’s no surprise that physicians are frequenting blogs and social media sites to exchange ideas, share their lives, seek employment, and connect with each other and patients. A growing number of doctors are participating in the online social media revolution with a wide array of intentions. Also, SEM (Search Marketing) professionals who seek access to the physician-demographic for advertising are finding clever ways to utilize blogging channels.

Cornucopia of Physician Blogs
Physician blogs like Kevin, MD, Family Medicine Notes, Fixin’ Healthcare, and journal Health Affairs cover topics ranging from the crises in medical liability, vaccination theory, medical news, and health care policy. Medical News Feed is a blog and medical news aggregator. Specialized blogs such as Dr. Len’s Cancer Blog, by Len Lichtenfeld, MD, and the Medical Practice Business Blog serve focused physician niche’s.

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Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing can be extremely effective. Think about it: the reason Google and Yahoo make so darn much money is because they sell ridiculous amounts of advertising, one click at a time. The reason real advertisers (like you) buy PPC in droves is because it can be a win-the-lottery marketing tool if wielded properly. Alternately PPC, for any number of reasons, can be a disappointment or a ramp up money pit to avoid.

As a rule, our agency’s historic conversion rates have been fantastic. Over time “fantastic” became the measure of success for us to the extent that we’re not happy about “good”or even “industry-standard results” for the product we’re selling. That’s a mistake because it leads to over promising clients who then perceive good results as poor.

There is a sane middle ground, neither feast nor famine, where the success of PPC ticks along at an acceptable and sustainable rate in terms of profit. What’s important is to keep PPC conversion expectations realistic in light of the product you’re selling and the cost of selling it in the “physical world” by traditional means.

A utterly fantastic result, albeit possible, should not be the only measure of success. We’ve learned that preparing clients to have realistic expectations is in everyone’s best interest. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s possible to learn a lot about how to do business as a search marketing firm from other SEM firms around the world by their blog posts, articles, and conference talks. We read luminaries like Rand Fishkin, Danny Sullivan, SEO Roundtable, Search Engine Guide, and SEOBook. SES has offered both small and large SEM company professional learning tracks in which SEM contracts and different ideas for SEM/advertising agency relationships were explored.

Tell but Don’t Tell too Much
The good natured sharing between SEM firms tends to stop with the revealing of business model information including SEM contracts, sample quote-for-services, and correspondences with clients. The dance can take a while to figure out, from both the SEM firm and client points of view. Read the rest of this entry »

Lee Odden over at Top Rank has a running “Big List” of SEM blogs which is a veritable who’s who of search marketing blogs. Literally, every blog I personally read is on the list and it’s a very useful resource. Over 350 blogs relating to search marketing, blogging, social media, and new media public relations are recommended. Thanks to Top Rank for including aimClear Search Marketing Blog on the Big List.

Hard to Make the Cut
There is no site-submission or review-request process to get on the Big List. Odden says up front that inclusion is “totally subjective and not an attempt to be a comprehensive resource, but one we’ve found to be useful at TopRank.” Still the Big List is very well respected in the trade and is an important benchmark of any search marketing blog’s credibility.

Some of my favorite blogs on the Big List are: Andy Beard, Bill Hartzer, Bruce Clay Blog, Cartoon Barry, Copyblogger, Daggle, FroggBlog, Graywolf’s SEO Blog, High Rankings Advisor Archives, Jim Boykin Internet Marketing Blog, Market Position, Matt Cutts, Occam’s Razor, Pronet Advertising, Search Engine Land, Search Marketing Standard Blog, and SEO by the SEA. Read the rest of this entry »

Modern analytics are beautiful. Since the early 90’s Internet marketing folks from New York to

Modern Analytics
Now with modern log analysis and page tagging tools like ClickTracks, Google Analytics, IndexTools, Unica Affinium NetInsight, and WebSide Story HBX Analytics we measure conversion absolutely. It’s a brave new world. As an SEM client, demand absolute conversion metrics from your search marketing firm or in-house staff or you’re likely throwing money away needlessly in the form of waste-percentage.

Measure Absolute Conversion.
Conversion tracking is a simple and unbelievably powerful reality. Using modern analytics now we associate all referral sources (sites, organic search, social communities, PPC, etc…) at the keyword level to behavior within content (funnels) against KPI (key performance indicators) like sales, information requests, file download, or any other defined goal. Because there are many other metrics to cross segment the data with like time on site, average page view count, entry page, exit page, bounce rate, etc…extremely powerful profiles provide serious insights regarding the effectiveness of content, traffic, user behavior, profit, and loss. Here is a screen capture of the Advanced Visitor Labeling cross-segmenting tool we use in ClickTracks:

Expect Actionable Analytics
The term “actionable” means that reading analytic reports actually provides insight regarding what to do next. Do your analytics reports justify your company’s expense in developing organic content, PPC, or time spent blogging? What’s the profit for each keyword, adgroup segmented by search engine? Are visitors referred from partner sites or paid links truly valuable? What are the results of landing page rotation testing in terms of profit or loss? Is organic traffic from direct brand search more or less engaged than reciprocal direct brand PPC traffic? Does fancy design, flash, or video matter to conversion? How does social media matter to our efforts? Read the rest of this entry »

Usually in this blog we discuss search marketing topics ranging from blog powered online media rooms to social media marketing, analytics, and pay per click. However, as my family often reminds me, search engine optimization is not everything (no, no it can’t be true it IS everything!) Ok not really…

With aimClear’s rapid growth and that of our strategic partners, we’ve been working a lot of hours. There have been many times while brainstorming and executing SEM tactics where I’ve thought about the analogy of SEO and fishing. Other industry pros even use terms like “cast a wide net” or “trolling for leads.” As with fishing, the quality of equipment, choice of bait, casting techniques, knowledge of the terrain, experience of your guide, and portfolio of adaptive tactics can mean the difference between eating fish or freeze dried beef stroganoff.

Duluth Minnesota, Gateway to the BWCA
By way of background, one of the reasons our company lives in Minnesota is our proximity from Duluth to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) along the Minnesota border with Canada. Situated near the North Shore of Lake Superior the BWCA is a vast, world class, and pristine wilderness gateway. Interconnected waterways and portages (yup that’s where you carry your canoe and packs from lake to lake) provide opportunities for thousands of miles of routing without ever seeing another human. The Boundary Waters north of Duluth are considered among the finest wilderness canoe trekking areas in the world. Oh yes, did I mention that the fishing is legendary. Read the rest of this entry »

The first question most clients ask when considering pay per click for the first time is “how much should we budget.” That’s a fair question given the way business works. We budget, spend, test ROI, proceed, re-budget and refine, or abandon the tactic. That’s how things have always worked in the realm of media expenditures. First businesses budget and then they spend.

PPC Budgeting is a 2 Step Process
PPC is different in that costs are unpredictable without testing. First we spend and then we budget. It’s a 2 step process. After limted testing (while avoiding the PPC ramp up money pit) PPC costs can be quite predictable and ROI tracking tools (analytics) much more advanced. The trade-off is as follows: willingness to test in order to determine budget + modern analytics = financial predictability and absolute ROI testing.

The Old Advertising Agency Way
In the traditional advertising agency media buyer model (think broadcast television, radio, cable, newspaper, billboards, collateral print etc…) the selling-sales-representative offers the agency media buyer a “rate card” along with the flavor of the month deal. Usually the price is fixed and buyer has a budget. In this scenario it’s easy for the media buyer to plan for the next fiscal year and set aside the cash. The prices are known and fixed. Read the rest of this entry »

Many skilled and experienced marketing professionals do not yet understand that the blog structure is the killer SEM enabled content management system. I know first hand what it means to misperceive blogging software. Though aimClear mashes up chunks of blog functionality behind many websites we work with, it took a few years to become personally committed to blogging.

The truth is that bloggers pioneered software and linking methods which socialized the interconnected grid of links and content. Blogging communication tools, laid over the Internet, have helped maximize the social promise of http protocol. Blog-style tools are ubiquitous in nearly all online social communities.

We build blog software hybrids to facilitate feed marketing, content management, hosting community dialog, interactions with social websites, and for blog powered online media rooms. It makes tons of sense. These pockets of functionality are easily available to mash up from open source software like WordPress and integrate easily with traditional website structures. Read the rest of this entry »

The term “social media” provokes a continuum of reactions ranging from parents concerned about MySpace predators (rightly so) to Internet marketing folks invested in leveraging traffic with blog technology enabled online media rooms. It’s interesting to note that, while millions of people participate in sites like StumbleUpon, Wikipedia, FaceBook, Squidoo, Digg, Netscape, Furl, Reddit, Del.ico.us, YouTube, Flickr, twitter, and myBlogLog, many informed Americans have never or barely interacted with social media enough to understand what the heck it is…or so they think.

Same As It Ever Was
In reality participating in an online social community is not very different from the physical human experience as we make our way though life. If you’ve ever recommended a restaurant to an associate, taken your kids to a local community center swimming pool, read a theater review, offered your opinion at a social gathering, or set up a buddy for a blind date you’re already a social media expert. The point of divergence is that online tools make the art of relationships easier. Read the rest of this entry »

In early June, Google updated their webmaster guidelines and included specific intent to kill WebPosition as the poster child for Google’s disdain for automated queries. Since WebPosition has been best friend to many (including me) for years, it was a disappointing development.

However before we really get going here, it should be noted that organic prominence reporting, WebPosition’s forte, is dead anyway. The inevitable progression of personalized search, which returns customized SERPs based on individuals’ web history, codifies the deal. Bulletproof conversion and ROI metrics calculated by modern analytics are the only uncontested measures of SEM success.

Clients Understand the Web 1.0 Way.
Many of our search marketing clients still perceive organic keyword rankings as the singular measure. To an extent they are correct in their assessment of value: top rank for a keyword is still a great asset. However, true search marketing experts teach prospective clients the new reality during the sales process and lead existing clients through the adaptive process. Also, WebPosition has other features which remain useful like Link Defender and Page Critic AKA “Beat the Algorithm.”

WebPosition’s Organic Prominence Reporter: The Pathology of Demise
The announcement from Google was cryptic: “As of December 5, 2006, we are no longer issuing new API keys for the SOAP Search API. Developers with existing SOAP Search API keys will not be affected.” SOAP was the Google API feature which allowed access to keyword rankings directly from the Google database infrastructure. On December 6th the SOAP API ceased to function in WebPostion, even for those of us in possession of API keys.

WebPosition blamed it on Google and advised users to turn off SOAP access in WP and switch back to the illegal screen-scraping mode. You see, in the past Google has officially discouraged screen-scraping the SERPs. Read the rest of this entry »