Synapse SEM Introduces New Website and Revamped Service Offering
Synapse SEM, a Leader in Statistical Optimization, Enhances its SEO and PPC Service Offerings and Launches New Website.
BOSTON, MA – September 22, 2014 – Synapse SEM™, a full-service search engine marketing firm with offices in Massachusetts and Connecticut, today announced it will be launching new services and a new website on October 1, 2014. The new service offerings are aimed at better servicing its clients’ evolving needs, and the new website will serve to better communicate those services and the Synapse brand to prospective clients and partners.
Synapse co-founder Paul Benson says “It’s clear that the SEO space has changed dramatically over the last twelve months. We’ve enhanced our service offering to ensure our clients get the best ROI on their marketing dollars. This includes adding content marketing services, building out our Link Quality Review capabilities and putting additional resources behind the development of our statistical tools. We are constantly improving our service offering, but this is the biggest advancement in our services since our inception nearly four years ago.”
Since making these changes, Synapse’s client base has benefited significantly. “Given our financial roots, clients tend to think of us as a data-centric agency. While this is certainly true, we’ve achieved large-scale organic rankings improvements for our clients by first focusing on technical SEO and inbound link quality. Companies are underestimating the impact algorithmic updates are having on their website’s visibility, and we’ve been very successful in helping companies identify and resolve this issue. This has led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in recovered revenue for our clients” says Synapse co-founder Mark Casali.
Synapse SEM’s new website will showcase its latest service offerings and promote new content related to the hottest topics in search engine marketing.
About Synapse SEM, LLC
Synapse SEM is a full service online marketing firm that leverages robust data analysis and statistics to provide its clients with deeper insights and uncover otherwise overlooked opportunities. With core competencies in paid search advertising, search engine optimization, social media marketing, mobile advertising and conversion optimization, the company develops, implements, and executes online marketing strategies focused on maximizing its clients’ ROI. Leveraging proprietary data analysis techniques and experienced subject matter experts, the agency is committed to achieving unparalleled results and providing the highest quality of service to its clients. For more information on Synapse SEM, LLC, call 781-591-0752 or visit www.synapsesem.com.
Google Authorship: An Often Overlooked SEO Strategy
In the SEO world, quick and simple opportunities to boost performance are about as common as a cactus in Siberia. The reality is that successful SEO strategies are dependent on intensive content development efforts, carefully optimized on-page tags, and a thorough attention to detail with your site’s technical health. Those tasks don’t come easily, so when an opportunity as simple and impactful as Google Authorship comes along, SEO professionals should take notice.
Despite its low-hanging benefits, Google Authorship has surprisingly gone overlooked by many marketers. In this post we’ll discuss the key benefits of the program and why you should spend the minimal time required to enroll.
The most tangible benefit of Google Authorship is its ability to differentiate your search engine listings and ultimately increase click-through rate. When content on your site is written by authors enrolled in Google Authorship, the ranking page is eligible to appear with a headshot from the author’s Google Plus profile. In addition, the listing will appear with a byline giving credit to the individual author. Consider the results that appear for the Google search on the term “Bid Op Tool:”
These two factors increase the real estate of your listing and add visual appeal, both of which are likely to positively influence your click-through-rate. Google recently completed an eye tracking study to measure the impact of Authorship Tags on user behavior. According to their study, they found that users had a “60% chance of fixating on the annotation when placed at the top of the snippet block.” In plain English, search results with an Authorship tag are likely to get clicked more than standard results.
It is still unconfirmed whether Google Authorship is an active signal in Google’s algorithm, but many SEO professionals feel that strong “Author Rank” will be an important ranking factor in the future. Google’s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, stated in his book that “information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.” If this is true, we can also suspect that domains are likely to benefit if Google sees “expert” authors regularly publishing on their site. This would give organizations the incentive to build in-house content development teams focused on creating unique and valuable content.
These are obviously less tangible benefits that are harder to measure, but it is clear that Google values credibility and expertise. With increasingly more quantifiable metrics to support these qualities, it would be prudent to anticipate their inevitable impact on rankings.
Writers can sign up for Google’s Authorship Program in just a few minutes. You’ll need to create a Google Plus profile (if you don’t already have one) with a recognizable headshot, and a work email linked to the domain(s) on which you regularly publish.
For such a simple process, Google Authorship can have a strong impact on your SEO strategies. To learn more about building a Google Authorship strategy visit Google’s Inside Search Feature or contact us today.
Guest Blogging is Alive and Well
Overview
In a recent blog post, Google’s Matt Cutts discusses the pervasiveness of spammy guest blogging activities. The head of Google’s Webspam team goes so far as to state, “So stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy.” The purpose of this article is to clarify Cutt’s statements and help marketers decide how to leverage guest blogging efforts moving forward.
Clarifying the Details
The main point of clarification is that guest blogging is still alive and well. Cutt’s article and prior videos on the topic were specifically targeting two audiences: blog owners and companies using guest blogs in ways that violate Google’s quality guidelines. Best practices related to guest blogging are summarized below for each audience.
Blog owners: Historically, numerous blog owners have accepted guest blog posts from various sources, including businesses with which they had no prior relationship. Google is simply encouraging these websites to properly scrutinize submissions to ensure they are original and high quality and offer relevant content to their blog readers. This suggestion is given to website owners to help them avoid damaging the reputation of their blog. For blog owners the premise is simple: offer your readers high-quality content and we’ll consider your blog high-quality, but offer them low-quality content and we’ll consider your blog low-quality. Of course, higher quality blogs will rank better than lower quality blogs.
Guest Bloggers violating Google’s quality guidelines: Websites can violate Google’s quality guidelines in several ways. Cutt’s article specifically brings to attention the following violations:
- Buying links: This one is pretty cut and dry. You shouldn’t pay for links.
- Requesting followed links: Google doesn’t like it if you specifically ask for a followed link. Followed links should be a natural result of other efforts, including your content marketing initiatives.
- Spinning articles: Article spinning (the practice of syndicating the same article or similar iterations of the same article to multiple websites) is frowned upon. After all, how can you provide unique content if you’re syndicating the same content to multiple outlets?
In terms of link building, guest blogging should only be used as a means to acquire high quality links (as opposed to a large quantity of links). Additionally, companies shouldn’t use guest blogs as a primary, or even secondary, method for acquiring links. The issue that Google identifies is that many companies realized that they could drive significant inbound link volume by mass producing guest blogs. When you’re after volume, your content development efforts will inevitably yield lower quality, less unique content. When this effort is multiplied by the thousands of companies engaged in guest blogging, the product is a sea of low quality, or even spammy, content that damages the integrity of search results. Clearly, this is something Google would like to minimize or stop altogether.
Dos and Don’ts of Future Guest Blogging
To ensure your guest blogging efforts are providing value and are not violating any of Google’s quality guidelines, we recommend you follow the following dos and don’ts of guest blogging.
Dos
Focus on quality, not quantity: This should hold true for all of your content development efforts. High quality, unique and compelling content is far more valuable than stale, mediocre content. Strong content helps build links naturally, improves brand equity and can be used more effectively as part of an overall content marketing strategy (see #4 below).
Target the right audience: Your content is only valuable if it’s seen by the right audience: your target market. Focus on outlets that allow you to gain visibility among your customers.
Build relationships with 3rd party websites: Once you find specific outlets that help you access your customers, build a strong relationship with them so you have the opportunity to promote content with them on an on-going basis. Frequency is an important metric in the context of content marketing and brand equity.
Think holistically: Your content should be developed as part of an overall content marketing strategy designed to help you generate more business. Don’t spend your time writing content simply to get a link; the link alone is rarely worth it.
If you’re a blog owner, have a solid review and submission policy for all guest posts: If you’re accepting guest blog post submissions, make sure you review the articles prior to publishing them. You should be looking for high quality, unique content that provides value to your readers.
Don’ts
Don’t pay for links: This is the most obvious violation. Google has been pretty adamant about this for years. Never pay for links.
Don’t request followed links: This is almost as obvious as #1. Followed links should happen naturally, but requesting them is a red flag to Google and should be a red flag to blog owners as well.
Don’t engage in article spinning: Repurposing the same article and submitting to multiple blogs is a clear violation to Google’s quality guidelines. If you’re even considering doing this, then you should rethink your entire content development strategy.
Don’t overreact: Google does not take kindly to “black hat” SEO practices and guest blogging is no exception. However, if you are developing and syndicating content the right way (as discussed above), you should have no concerns regarding your guest blogging efforts. Companies should be able and willing to collaborate with 3rd parties to develop unique, interesting and original content to share with their customers and other interested readers.
Conclusion
Keep in mind that Google’s ultimate goal is to provide the most relevant search results possible. Over time, guest blogging has been abused so much for ranking purposes by certain marketers (for some that term is far too complimentary) that a shadow has been cast over the entire guest blogging community. If you’ve been using guest blogging properly as part of an overall content marketing strategy, then you should have nothing to worry about. If you’ve been using guest blogs in an effort to manipulate search results, then you should stop immediately and rethink your strategy. Guest blogging isn’t dead; in fact, it’s more alive now than ever for those who choose to utilize it properly.
If you need help developing a comprehensive content marketing strategy, or if you’re interested in learning more about how guest blogging should be leveraged moving forward, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Driving Sales From Your Facebook Followers
It seems that just about every company has a Facebook page these days. Many companies are even devoting serious resources to develop new and fresh social content. From our perspective, it often seems that the motivation to join the Facebook fray is in itself ‘social.’ Companies need to have a Facebook page because their ‘competitors have one—and hey, everyone has one!’
All of these social efforts, whether strategic or not, have given many companies an impressive online following; it’s not uncommon for even small businesses to have upwards of 10,000 Facebook likes.
Facebook is, of course, a powerful communication tool. Companies can advertise their latest promotions, PR initiatives, and other relevant information to their followers vis-à-vis their Facebook page. But can Facebook pages be used outside of a communication function, and help to directly drive new sales?
First, let’s look at the composition of a typical Facebook audience. Facebook followers are predominately made up of existing customers. Facebook pages rarely rank organically for product/service level keywords, and product/service research is not something that is historically performed through social media. For these reasons, if a user has navigated to your Facebook page, it is most likely because they are already aware of your brand. Second, if a user has gone so far as to “like” your page, they are demonstrating some pretty serious enthusiasm in your company. So, we can infer that the majority of your Facebook audience will be comprised of enthusiastic existing or prospective customers. This is obviously good news to the sales-minded business owner, because an enthusiastic audience that has already qualified their interest in your business is certainly ripe for a well-timed direct marketing or remarketing campaign.
So, how does a business reach these customers? The issue with Facebook followers is that they are anonymous. There’s no name, email, or phone number to associate with a follower—just a digitized “like.” The obvious answer is to reach these customers through Facebook wall posts, but this is a very limited strategy for several reasons. Facebook wall posts cannot be personalized to speak to specific segments of your customer base. Also, wall posts are highly likely to be lost in the fodder of an active news feed.
The solution to these issues is to be able to relate a “like” to a unique customer. Fortunately, we have developed a strategy to address this dilemma. There are several Facebook apps on the market today that help recruit user information. For example, North Social’s “deal share” app is designed as a “gate” for a deal or promotion. The deal is advertised on the company’s Facebook page, and accessed through the North Social app. In order to qualify for the deal, the user is instructed to complete a set of customizable criteria. For example, you could require a customer to enter their name, email and phone number to gain access to the deal. Alternatively, you can “gate” a deal by making users have to like your page (if they haven’t already done so) or share the deal with their own friends. The user’s information is automatically logged into North Social’s interface, and data can be downloaded to an Excel report at any time. Logically, the more enticing the deal, the more interaction it will receive. Over time, a company can effectively build a customer contact list by acquiring the contact information of their Facebook followers.
Once user information is obtained, companies can relate customer names with specific demographic segments or even past purchase history. Customized email campaigns can be launched to push frequency of purchase or cross-selling opportunities.
This “deal share” strategy is a great way to unlock the sales potential of your Facebook page. By turning anonymous Facebook followers into identifiable and unique users, a company can grow what is otherwise a communication portal into a powerful direct marketing and remarketing tool.
Is Your Anchor Text Diversified?
How to Evaluate Your Anchor Text Profile:
Google’s latest algorithmic update, dubbed “Penguin,” is carefully evaluating anchor text diversification when determining website rankings. In this article we will demonstrate how to evaluate your anchor text profile.
Making Optimization Signficant: The Role of Statistical Analysis
Paul Benson and Mark Casali, co-founders of the online marketing firm Synapse SEM, LLC, have been published in the Search Marketing Standard Magazine. Following an intensive research project with Babson College Professor Dessislava Pachamanova, Ph.D., Synapse SEM has developed a new suite of statistical applications and tools. The corresponding article “Making Optimization Significant: The Role of Statistical Analysis,” co-authored with Dr. Pachamanova, explains how these tools can be introduced to help search marketers make better decisions and obtain deeper insights from the data they analyze every day.
Paid Search Branded Campaigns: Effective or Excessive?
Every paid search campaign we build seems to elicit the same response. No matter who the client is—a small local business, or a fortune 500 company—every client questions whether our campaigns should include branded keywords and ads. In other words, should the campaign target keywords that include the company name and similar iterations?
We understand the client’s skepticism because paid search is often being used as a vehicle to gain visibility on search terms that otherwise organically fail to rank. Branded terms, of course, typically have the strongest organic visibility. So, let us reiterate the age old question from our clients and ask, why add a paid advertisement to a search results page that is almost guaranteed to have a first position organic listing?
In our experience paid branded ads have multiple benefits:
- Competition – Displaying branded ads can be viewed as a defensive mechanism to protect against competitors usurping prized positions on branded keywords. Stated differently, a company should never be in a position where a competitor is the first ad/listing the user sees on the page.
- Real Estate – With all of the ad extensions now available, paid search ads can take up some pretty impressive real estate on the results page. Depending on the level of competition on branded keywords, it is entirely possible to dominate 100% of the above-the-fold results with a paid advertisement and first position organic listing.
- Psychological Effects – There have been numerous studies performed showing that when search results contain both a paid listing and an organic listing a user is far more likely to click-through to your website. The two channels are proven to work symbiotically, and enhance your site’s credibility.
- Cost – Ultimately, the inclusion of branded terms in a paid search advertising campaign comes down to cost-benefit. Cost-per-click bids on branded terms are typically very affordable. Consequently, total cost incurred on branded terms should make-up only a small portion of an overall paid advertising budget.
So, to offer a conclusive answer to our clients—we include branded keywords in your campaigns because it is the best thing for your campaigns. Bidding on branded queries allows us to protect against competition, dominate above-the-fold results, and improve the credibility of your site; and all this can be accomplished within a very affordable budget.
Is Your Bid Op Tool Worth The Cost?
By Paul Benson
Thousands of online advertisers in the U.S. rely on bid optimization tools (BOTs) to make their paid search campaigns more efficient. These software “solutions” or “platforms” which typically leverage rule-based or algorithmic bidding, claim the upper hand against manual bidding strategies. While it’s certainly true that in some cases these tools vastly outperform manual bidding, the challenge for advertisers is determining whether a BOT will prove cost-effective for their particular campaigns.
BOTs are perceived as superior to manual bidding because they are able to leverage historical data and automatically update bids based on the day of week, time of day, and other factors. They also save time as advertisers no longer need to analyze performance and make bid changes on a relatively routine basis. Unfortunately, just as BOTs create many efficiencies, they also generate significant costs.
On average, advertisers pay 5% of spend for BOTs. For an advertiser spending $100,000 a month, this equates to $60,000 per year. Some providers also charge a one-time implementation or launch fee up to $10,000. At this cost, a company could hire a new specialist simply to handle bidding for the account.. It is also true that BOTs require integration with existing platforms, which may cause on-going frustration among advertisers looking for a truly “automated” solution. This frustration is intensified when advertisers learn that BOTs will require consistent manual oversight, and sometimes intervention. On a past account audit it was determined that the advertiser’s automated tool had spent nearly $6,000 in two months on a single keyword that generated an ROAS of just 27% (significantly below the ROAS goal). Neither the tool, nor the keyword, was a new addition to the campaign, which made this gross oversight on the part of the BOT even more perplexing.
For this same advertiser, we noticed over the course of several days that only 4% of converting terms, on average, received a daily bid change, and 88% of converting keywords didn’t receive a single bid change throughout the monitored time period. Furthermore, keywords that comprised nearly 80% of all conversions were displayed in a position of 1.7 or better. Nearly 94% of these terms had a CPA at or below goal, signifying that little optimization could be done from a bidding standpoint to improve performance on these terms. After analyzing the number of bid changes, and the size of each bid change, it was concluded that this particular bid tool saved the client between $500 and $1,000 per month; the bid tool alone cost more than four times that amount to run.
Innovations within the primary advertising platforms, AdWords and AdCenter, make manual bidding all the more attractive. For example, marketers formerly relied on BOTs to factor in day of week and time of day when making bid changes. However, now Google AdWords’ Ad Scheduling functionality allows advertisers to adjust bids (up or down) during specified days or times of day. AdWords also gives insight into performance by time of day or day of week (as long as you have a Google Conversion Pixel in place). As a result, advertisers can leverage day parting to effectively change bids by time of day and day of week, just like a BOT can. All of this functionality is available for free directly within the AdWords interface; you don’t need to access, pay for, or become familiar with a 3rd party interface.
Despite the aforementioned challenges, there are certainly scenarios where a BOT is still a valuable and unrivaled tool. Ultimately, the decision to implement a BOT should be evaluated on a case by case basis. Fortunately, there are three criteria that will help point you in the right direction. First and foremost, consider your industry. Advertisers in the retail space, especially those with thousands of SKUs, are more likely to benefit from a BOT. This is true simply because a BOT’s value increases as the number of keywords increases. Sophisticated BOTS can accurately determine the right CPC based on not only historical performance of a particular keyword, but also on historical performance of related keywords. This insight, although small on an individual keyword basis, can add up to thousands of dollars across an account.
The second consideration can be referred to as the PPC Gini Coefficient. A variant from its economic definition, the PPC Gini Coefficient can be calculated by dividing the number of converting keywords that are meeting or exceeding your goal and are in an average position better than 2 (1.9, 1.8, etc.) by the number of total converting keywords. The higher your PPC Gini coefficient, the less opportunity there is for bid optimizations, and therefore the less useful a BOT will be. A coefficient of 70% is considered high, while 50% is considered relatively normal. It’s possible that your campaigns contain keywords that are exceeding your goal, but are in a position below 2 (2.1, 2.2, etc.) simply because the CPCs haven’t been properly adjusted. If this is the case, these terms should be removed from the calculation.
Finally, if you’re currently using a BOT, you should also consider the frequency and size of bid changes. This data, along with click volume, can give you a reasonable sense for how much money the BOT is saving you every month. Keep in mind, however, that every time a BOT decreases a CPC to gain efficiency, it may be also sacrificing conversions. It’s also important to understand whether the bid changes are more commonly max CPC increases or decreases. Surprisingly, out of all the bid changes implemented for the advertiser mentioned earlier, 94% were decreases in max CPCs. Therefore, in this particular case, only cost savings were considered; potential revenue generated from increased CPCs was ignored.
If you’re still struggling with the decision of whether to implement a BOT, consider contacting one of the providers to request an estimate. Marin Software has an internal tool that estimates your increased ROAS if you were to adopt their software. While these estimates are commonly ‘optimistic,’ this additional information may aid in your decision. It’s difficult to test a BOT, since significant upfront work is required to integrate the software with your account. Therefore, you should collaborate with an experienced SEM expert or agency to conduct a thorough analysis based on historical campaign performance. If you’re already using a BOT, don’t fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy. Carefully evaluating the efficacy of your bid tool could save you thousands.
Google Introduces AdWords For Video
Earlier this spring, Google expanded their paid search advertising capabilities by launching their new video advertising platform “AdWords for Video.” The program’s launch immediately turned video content advertising into an affordable, targetable, and measurable medium. AdWords for Video operates under a pay-per-view model where the advertiser is only charged when users have watched their video in entirety, or for thirty seconds—whichever is shorter.
In terms of set-up, all an advertiser needs to get started is a YouTube Account. The AdWords for Video platform is programed so that videos from any linked YouTube Account can be pulled directly into new ads in the account.
AdWords for Video regulations allow for four different ad formats:
- In-Search – As a featured ad above the YouTube search results (similar to the ad locations for search network text ads). This ad format was formerly known as “promoted videos” on YouTube.
- In-Slate – As a an uninterrupted featured video that plays before targeted content
- In-Display – As a suggestion to the right of a targeted YouTube on the video watch page
- In-Stream – As a ‘skippable’ video that plays before targeted content
Upon learning about the new AdWords for Video platform, our team wondered how it differed from having traditional video ads on the display network. In our experience, so far there are several key differences. First, as described above, AdWords for Video allows for cost-per-view bidding. Display network bidding only allows for CPC, CPM or conversion focused bidding. Second, the display network allows for non-TrueView format videos to be incorporated into click-to-play or in-stream ads. Display network video ads also currently allow for placements on YouTube, but Google has already hinted that these ad formats will be phased out to give way for AdWords for Video. Third, the ability to target ads is different in AdWords for Video. Instead of having Ad Groups, AdWords for Video organizes ads into “targeting groups” set at the campaign level. Targeting groups allow for demographic, topic, interest, placement, remarketing, contextual keyword, and search keyword inclusions and exclusions. Finally, in AdWords for Video, one video ad can be applied to multiple ad formats. On the display network, each video has unique content and format.
So what type of benefits can AdWords for Video bring search marketers? There are certainly long term benefits associated with the efficiencies AdWords for Video brings to video content management and optimization, but there is also a more immediate advantage. Because AdWords for Video is so new, it is unsaturated. The paid video advertising market is just beginning to develop, and consequently cost-per-view prices in many industries are still available for just a couple of cents. Also, the cost-per-view bidding format, in of itself, precipitates a major advantage. Since the advertiser is only charged when a viewer watches their entire video, there is the potential for a lot of “free branding.” In other words, a partial video views may not be a bad thing. In fact, if your ads are engineered well and you can get your message across in the first five to ten seconds of your video, you are likely to reach a significant amount of customers for free.
Synapse SEM Published In Search Marketing Standard Magazine
Boston—May 29, 2012—Paul Benson and Mark Casali, co-founders of the online marketing firm Synapse SEM, LLC, have been published in the Search Marketing Standard Magazine this week. Following an intensive research project with Babson College Professor Dessislava Pachamanova, Ph.D., Synapse SEM has developed a new suite of statistical applications and tools. The corresponding article “The ‘Significance’ of Optimization,” co-authored with Dr. Pachamanova, explains how these tools can be introduced to help search marketers make better decisions and obtain deeper insights from the data they analyze every day.
“Despite more advanced functionality, paid search advertisers are still faced with the challenge of deciding when to act based on the data at hand. With our tools, advertisers can more accurately determine when to pull non-performing keywords and campaigns offline, how long to run A/B tests, and when changes in key metrics exceed normal fluctuations. I look forward to introducing these tools and the underlying methodologies in Search Marketing Standard this month,” says Mr. Benson.
Mark Casali commented, “I really believe that a statistics based approach to optimization can revolutionize the SEM industry. These tools are very exciting for our firm and we are excited about the benefits they will bring to client performance. In our eyes, this is really just the start of ‘automated’ optimization.”
About Synapse SEM
Synapse SEM is a full service online marketing firm that leverages robust data analysis and statistics to provide its clients with deeper insights and uncover otherwise overlooked opportunities. With core competencies in paid search advertising, search engine optimization, social media marketing, mobile advertising and conversion optimization, the company develops, implements, and executes online marketing strategies focused on maximizing its clients’ ROI. Leveraging proprietary data analysis techniques and experienced subject matter experts, the agency is committed to achieving unparalleled results and providing the highest quality of service to its clients. For more information on Synapse SEM, LLC, call 860-880-0065 or visit www.synapsesem.com.
