BlogKing September 13th, 2007
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For a good laugh read Top 21 Signs You Need a Break from SEO
over at Small Business SEM.
OK enough, now back to our regularly scheduled SEM rant.
Craig Danuloff of Commerce360 makes a strong case for not getting swayed by simplistic ROAS metrics. In a series of posts he states that Return on Ad Spend in Pay for Click campaigns is easy to report but very misleading unless you factor in the real ROI not just ROAS. But the reality is that gross profit margins vary by product and promotional offers, so conputing an ROI for every product vs. ad spend is no small task. Worse yet the analystics systems are not yet up to a task of this complexity, so a manual method is required.
It would be great if paid search was a simple little game where the skills you’ve picked up in other endeavors prepared you to easily and consistently win. Once upon a time it might have been.
I recommend reading the series.
Then get Avinash Kaushik’s book Web Analytics-An Hour a Day.
Read up on his concept of the Trinity; experience, behavior and outcomes. When you understand the trinity of your online business you can create actionable metrics that boost ROI.
I just started but already I know this book is a classic akin to A Random Walk Down Wall Street is to portfolio investing.
BlogKing March 6th, 2007
Mat McGee’s post about SEO for small business:
Time. Money. Knowledge.Those are the three biggest challenges a small business must overcome to achieve search marketing success, and the three things that make small business search marketing unique. Many small businesses have one or two of those, but not the third. And some small businesses don’t have any of the three, making their road to search success even harder to travel.
Time. As any search marketer can tell you, there are no short cuts to success, no quick fixes when it comes to a broken web site or unsuccessful search marketing campaign. SEO is a process that demands time, and that’s often in short supply at small businesses. According
to the MasterCard Global Small Business Survey 2006, small business owners worldwide work an average of 54 hours a week. That’s 11 hours a day for a 5-day workweek. So, for every small business owner that dared to only put in a 40-hour week, someone else was on the clock for 68 hours. For many, trying to run a business and execute a search marketing campaign is easier said than done.
Money. According to the same MasterCard survey, only half of small businesses owners worldwide are confident they’ll meet their financial goals in 2007. The U.S. Small Business Administration cites a 2005 study that says only 44% of new small businesses will survive four years. The National Federation of Independent Business cited the financial impact on small businesses when it opposed the recently approved minimum wage hike in the U.S. Money is obviously a Big Issue for small businesses. $50,000+ SEO campaigns and 6-figure PPC budgets just aren’t realistic for many small businesses. When you’re small, the challenge is how to get more bang from less budget.
Knowledge. I shared an anecdote in last week’s column about David Wallace finding only 2 of 20 small business owners he spoke to doing search marketing. The other 18? Not doing it, or completely unaware of search marketing altogether.
Read the rest at Search Engine Land.
If you are a small business owner that falls in that group of 18, contact me for my free white paper that will help get you up to speed on what you need to know and why it make sense to start ASAP.
