search marketing « The Stratius Blog

McCain Wins in Search Ads

October 6, 2008

A presidential campaign is one of the most complex marketing and advertising engines around. They touch every channel of media, every vertical measured in detail, and invest in every part of the country. So decisions to spend in certain niches are very deliberate. The McCain Campaign has clearly made search engine advertising a priority.

Attack ads on both sides fill TV, radio and Youtube, as McCain’s superior use of PPC (pay per click) search advertising flies under the radar. PPC can make or break a lot of online businesses and the McCain camp has been out in front on search ads since early in the primaries.

John McCain is outspending (by 2x) Democrats Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton on issues as well as buying his opponents’ “brand terms” - iReport, April 2008

Both candidates have focused less on issue focused keywords (health care, economy, etc.) and focused more on keywords that deal with the opposing candidate. Within this trend, McCain ads are getting more clicks. On Google Adwords, McCain focused ads get around 250 clicks per day compared to around 150 per day for Obama.

One McCain ad displays when searching for “Obama for president?” It asks the searcher “Why not learn more about John McCain for president?” and links to the McCain website

According to data from the Google AdWords website, advertisements targeted to users searching for “John McCain” on the Internet, cost nearly twice as much as those targeting users searching for “Barack Obama.” - Politico

This presidential race is in new territory when it comes to utilizing the web. I imagine who has used it better will not be a clear picture until after the election is long over. Right now, both campaigns can claim their own wins.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged mccain, politics, ppc, search marketing, seo | No Comments »

Flugpo, Not Just a Funny Name

August 24, 2008

Want to reach a ton of people with a free online advertisement?

Flugpo is that service. Its kind of like “Myspace meets Craigslist,” only without the dark alleys, crime and spammers.

As one of many new social networks out there, Flugpo has created a good niche focusing on trusted classified ads, but with more transparency than existing online solutions. It focuses on representing real people authentically so that you can learn about them and earn trust.

Many of these people are entrepreneurs and highly connected web users in their own right, so the relationships have higher value. All Flugpo classifieds are also open to search engines, offering significant SEO and link opportunities. One user even got a call from the Rachel Ray show within 1 hour of posting a classified ad about her “kitchen remodeling contractor” business. Some speedy results.

Flugpo offers a free and effective classified ad section that should meet all of your advertising needs. These ads are picked up by the search engines and can produce big results. - Flugpo Blog

Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged advertising, classifides, internet, internet marketing, internet tools, new media, search marketing, seo, social networking | 5 Comments »

7 Free SEO Assessment Tools

August 19, 2008

UPDATE: Since this post, we have launched YourSiteScore.co m, a collection of online SEO report tools our own higher level SEO assessments (not free).

In the SEO world there are the pros, the novices, and then 99% of the people sit in between. Every webmaster, blogger, small business owner in the world should be learning the basics of SEO. And it does not have to be expensive to teach yourself some useful SEO lessons. There is a vast knowledge base available online, free to browse and educate yourself from, including many many free SEO tools, that can make the trip that much easier along the way.

Search Status Firefox Addon - If you are not using Firefox, you have some catching up to do, start now. A recent favorite of mine, Search Status is by far the best SEO browser plugin I have seen. It lists the Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, and Compete.com rank automatically for every site discreetly in the status bar, and also has a ton of other options to dissect the SEO of any page. A must have.
Search Engine Spider Simulator - A search engine spider is a program search engines use to “crawl” the web, looking for and archiving content, that will then be put through an algorithm to determine when and if it will be displayed in search results. It is important to know what words the spider sees in what order. Many people look over this simple step.
Keyword Suggestion Tool - You probably think you know of a couple keywords people might type in to search for your site. You may even be targeting some keywords on your site already to improve your ranking there. But it is always good to use a keyword suggestion tool to look for the keywords your missing and to check their search rates.
Yahoo Site Explorer - This Site Explorer along with its Google counterpart Google Webmaster Tools, allows you to claim your websites and then explore all the inbound linking that the search engine is able to find. If you are new to SEO, inbound links are a huge help in lifting your SEO performance. These free tools will allow you to explore your success in creating these.
Website Grader - Cool little quick and simple grade of your website. A good basic tool for seeing where you stand.
Dead Link Checker - This tool takes a little time, but its worth it; Making sure your links are working is important to your overall link strategy and to the search engines.
SEO Chat - Last and certainly not least, SEOChat.com is a vast knowledge base for your SEO educational needs. Go explore.