RyanJin.me » Paid Search

National Mortgage Rate

Ryan — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:52:58 +0000

After checking my mail and browsing the top headlines on my iGoogle page, one specific keyphrase caught my eye… “National Mortgage Rate.” Now I know what you might be thinking… actually I don’t. Let me just say, it’s on my mind.

Any ways, after checking the average rates, trends, yadda yadda yadda, I did a simple Google search for “National Mortgage Rate” and came up with this ingenious paid search ad:

Interesting huh?

So let’s disect this just a tiny bit… It looks like a Paid Search ad, there’s a heading, some content, and then a link.. but then there are some radio buttons and a ‘Compare rates’ button. That’s new, well at least, it hasn’t shown up in a Google search result for me before. After a quick click-through, this is what I came upon…

Click the image to get a better view

Do you see what I see?

Sure it might just look like a great way for us to put in our home loan information and then shop around for the best refinancing options available.. I mean its just a phone call away right? But let’s just think about this for one second. Google has all of this information. We’re still at Google.com… we still see our iGoogle login at the top of the screen… why is Google helping me make this very life-changing decision by giving me some valuable information?

Want the hard truth? Google has stepped into the lead generation spotlight. Really.. and I think they have poised themselves to pretty much kill everything, or at least alter, in their wake.

If Google is able to put THEIR link on the TOP of their paid search listings… (Yeah.. it looks new.. so people are going to click it), why would anyone shop around further? I would think they’d stick around on Google for a little while longer right? So let’s just say they do so. Now, people are given hard numbers.. prices, rates.. even phone numbers! If I can see that I can pay $300 bucks less on my home loan with all of the same loan information and all of the same valuation, I’m going to go out and contact that particular bank.. for sure. So where does Google make it’s money?

Instead of Google Adwords selling a company a single click, now they are able to sell a company a true and honest lead. Oh my God. How much do you think companies are willing to pay Google if someone has actively shown an interest in their company and are very serious about buying a home or refinancing? It is really staggering to imagine the money that can be flowing between Google and their advertisers. But I guess that is life right?

So whats next? I say.. look for these same types of comparison shopping (aka Lead Generation) advertisements to flood your searches. It’ll be a while before it hits everything.. but if you’re looking at purchasing a big ticket item… (mortgage/home, online education, insurance, etc) look out. By all means, USE IT! But understand that Google has poised themselves to get some major bang for their buck when it comes to lead gen.

Peace

Google Fade and User Experience = Wait For It!

Ryan — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:17:52 +0000

While searching today, I noticed an odd occurrence on Google’s homepage. No, not your personal iGoogle page, just the regular web search starting page that not too long ago, epitomized the simplicity and unclutteredness Google is known for. In all reality, it still is one of my most favorite homepages of all time. So whats new?

You know those “Find the Difference” games? Try this on!

Versus…

(You can click on the screen shots for a better look.)

So do you see the difference?

If you haven’t noticed it by now, the Google search homepage is now waiting to add your account info, links to other features, and even the About Us or Advertising links, until you’ve moused over the site, or at least have taken some kind of further action. Basically, you’re given the logo, a text box, and the phrase, “Press Enter to Search.” Interesting huh? Once you have moused into the page, all of the regular links come back. So what’s the deal?

So after some research.. I found this line to be a little intriguing. As a side note, if you haven’t taken the time to look through Google’s HTML and Javascript, you should. Any ways, after taking a look at this as well as thumbing through bits and pieces of adjoining Javascript, I started wondering what this Google Fade thing was… it this a stepping stone for something bigger? A test of some sort? Maybe it is purely an aesthetic thing, I don’t know.But it is kinda fun to guess!

My theory:

So there are a few parts to my theory, but the major junk of it revolves around Google Suggest. If you don’t know what Google Suggest is, go to Google, and start typing a search phrase. See those suggestions that Google thinks you’re looking for? That is Google Suggest.

Alright, that is all fine and good, but how does this relate to Google Fade? (Wow, if Google’s mission statement was to slap their name on products and services, they’ve definately succeeded) Take a look at the this entry over on the Google Blog. Some of the main topics Jonathan Effrat, David Kadouch and Matt Kulick talk about relate the the ease, speed, and personalization Google Suggest gives a user. What better way to emphasize this then to take all other forms of navigation out! More on this in a minute.

In addition they also touch on some really interesting features that are becoming more and more evident. If you’ll notice…

… when I started searching for Yelp, Suggest popped up more then highly qualified suggestions, but more importantly, stuck an actual result in there! I’m not kidding… If you type in yelp, and down arrow to the actual Yelp link, it will take you to the home page. Sorta a glimpse of ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ in action I suppose.

Another interesting issue Effrat, Kadouch and Kulick speak towards in the inclusion of Paid Listing in the suggestions themselves! Whoa, I know! Go to their post and read it yourself. They have a screen shot. Think about that for a minute. What if, while you were typing your search query, the company you were looking for pops up automatically and you’re saved the trouble of being taken to those pesky search engine results pages? Annoying! (not really)

In addition to these ideas, Google Labs also reveal some interesting perspective. If you’re interested, take a look at the experiments and activities you can do in the Labs. Keyboard shortcuts… Accessibility. They’re continuing to look into and research even better ways people can search online, as well as on mobile devices.

So as Google Fade in all reality could be just a beautiful aesthetic the search engine wants to incorporate to make your searching experience calmer, understand that there are some key landmarks taking place. You know how Hulu.com MAKES you watch a commercial before you can watch your video? What if Google starts showing you pages of paid material before you can start resuming your search? Interesting to say the least!

Peace

YouTube XL – Search On Couch

Ryan — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:21:32 +0000

So last night I was chilling at home with Andrea, and I wanted to play some music on the good ole’ Nintendo Wii. So what do I do? Pump up Wii Internet Channel Powered by Opera, check out YouTube… but whats this? YouTube XL…

This is the first thing I see as soon as I go to www.YouTube.com. (I had to make it big to fit in with the theme of the huge XL in the logo) Although this was the first time I noticed this new feature for YouTube access, come to find out, its been out since June 2nd. You can see how up to speed I am.

Pleasantly surprised that I’d be able to see HD videos, in their full glory with little effort on my part, I chuckled with excitement and glee. Although some of the videos I was looking for were a bit glitchy at times, others seemed to work perfectly fine. Not quite sure the dilemma there, but rather irritating nonetheless. To take a quick look at my YouTubing experience last night, check out these gems…

Rick Ross’ Maybach Music 2 feat. Kanye West, T-Pain, and Lil Wayne is brilliant. I know its main stream, but the instrumental is so complex and ’stadium status’ and for some reason, reminds me of video game music from 1998. Hot!

Target Women is a great series of videos produced by CurrentTV starring Sarah Haskins. The ideas typically take a selected topic every week… ie Wedding Shows, Chocolate, Cleaning, or anything else often stereotypically associated with women, and brings the humor out of their respected advertising campaigns.

And then we had to watch HGTV’s $250,000 Challenge.

Any ways, after watching a few videos on YouTube XL, I’ve come to realize that… As our modality of accessing the internet continues to evolve and change, so do our websites. Thanks primarily to the iPhone, many highly trafficked web pages now have Mobile versions, or less CSS’d and imaged versions, compared to their original state. Means faster and easier readability on your mobile phone of preference. XL on the other hand caters to those of us with internet connections to our large screen televisions, via anything from the Wii, or anything else that allows you to access the internet from your couch. “I’ve been at work all day.. why would I sit behind a computer at home to watch YouTube videos?” Sheesh.

While YouTube isn’t really a search tool (yeah I know it is), it does give a good representation for how search is developing. With statistics saying things like, ‘more and more people search from the cellphones these days then from their computer,’ there is a great disservice going on here between what is being said, and what is actually going on. I don’t know for a fact that more and more people are not searching online these days.. I do think that more and more people are search from their phones, though… or their TVs in my personal case. Search hasn’t shifted, it has just become more broad. Now stemming from my experience in SEM, maybe we should do a better job compensating for these new audiences rather then trying to fit them in with the rest of the crowd. They are converting on something totally different. Right? Often times… on nothing!

But as we begin to watch YouTube videos in our cereal bowls and from the backs of our hands, I think companies are really starting to realize they are having more and more reasons to venture into online advertising and publicity. ‘Hey.. I sell good cereal.. I’d like to be in your cereal bowl browser/app!’ Coming Q3 ‘10.

Peace

Google Maps – A Content Factory that Evolves

Ryan — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:22:17 +0000

So last week sometime, I forgot what day it was, I came across a Tweet mentioning the new features of Google Maps. Have you seen them? They are ridiculous. Check out my old office when I worked in Seattle at Marchex…

View Larger Map

Any ways, if you haven’t noticed, you’re now able to click on various parts of the street view map to zoom in or travel to the specific location of which you clicked. Gone are the days of clicking through streets to find the restaurant you want to go to. Gone are the days of thinking.. ‘Wow, somehow, I’m here when I need to be all the way down there.. it’s too much work to go to map view again just to go to the right location. I’m going to just keep clicking until I get there.’ – Okay so that might just be me, but you get my point. Take a minute to go to maps.google.com and play around in street view. It’s kinda fun!

But whats the point? Why make a good thing better?

So Google Maps isn’t Social Media. It isn’t SEO, or even PPC, but it is content… and you better believe you’ll be finding all three of those things embedded into it sooner or later if not already. Take for example. Google Business Listings. Google was smart enough to tell people.. ‘Hey… we’ve got this application out there that is way better then other maps on the internet, that we’d like to populate with GOOD information.. such as your business! Do you want to be on GOOGLE MAPS?’

‘Sure?’ says Barry Wells of Barry Wells Chevrolet. (Disclaimer: I don’t think there is a Barry Wells Chevrolet.. if there is, you should rejoice in my free publicity!)

Why wouldn’t local businesses want to show up on the map most Googlers, let alone people, use today. – Add features such as kick ass zoom, position warping, and simulated earthquake damage.. this is not available yet, and you’ve got a content factory that people are just going to want to keep pouring their heart and soul into. It’s the Google business model. (If you don’t know the Google business model…. Create Content Theme Parks (Search Engines) -> Slowly Incorporate Advertising -> Make Gazillions… its sort of similar to this video:

Alright so those mind trick videos are kinda dumb; your attention is not on the moving bear, but nonetheless, the bear was there… you can never go back and tell me otherwise. Although the bear is irrelevant to the basketball players, it does ad value to the video. Essentially.. Google has perfected this illusion, so much that it’s not really an illusion anymore. PEOPLE LOVE BEARS!

As Google Maps continues to pull more and more people, businesses, and cool tools/applications that make map navigation easier, why not optimize for this local audience. Make the effort to create the Local Business Listing, or submit some photos for a particular address, or just write a review or two. You know SEO, you know that content is key. Join the local conversation, and you might be surprised at who sees you. But although you might not be a local business owner, you can at at least wave to people when they drive by.

Peace

Fetchback Retargeting

Ryan — Mon, 11 May 2009 22:30:32 +0000

Monday afternoon, and once again I found myself working. Nothing new, but the day seems to be going by quickly. That being said, I just thought I’d talk a little bit today on my experiences with Fetchback and the power that is ‘Retargeting’!

At work, I deal with a plethora of different search agencies, ad agencies, marketing companies, etc. etc. And to tell you the truth, after a while, hearing sales pitch after sales pitch of why we need a certain thing gets kind of old. Thank goodness I have a little bit of a system. An in all reality, you learn a little bit with time how to just say no. Fetchback, on the other hand, is one of my favorites. (We’re already working with them, so maybe they don’t count)

Fetchback is a retargeting company that works with you, a client, in creating holistic marketing campaigns dedicated towards a group of individuals that sometimes rarely gets noticed. “Has beens” Well not really has beens, but people who’ve come and gone from your site, just like that. What retargeting does, however, is it allows targeted display ads to populate those individuals search and online activity experiences, not only increasing branding, but pushing ads at reasonably good CPCs/CPMs, etc, since the targeting is so superb. Does that make sense? In essence, we’re targeting a group of ads to people who thought “Hmm… that seems interesting, maybe I’ll come back and look at them later.” Cool right?

Well since working with Fetchback, I’ve seen great numbers, and thats why I’m happy to share this kind of info with you! Actually, you can check me out on their site… www.Fetchback.com/Testimonials.html Just look for my name.

Also they have a YouTube channel.

Just some interesting video… I dunno… Thanks Fetchback!

Peace

P.S. One thing… their site could do with some SEO optimization for sure. Just my little sidenote, in case they are listening.

The Curse of Landing Pages… Well My Curse

Ryan — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 18:43:34 +0000

After a big landing page overhaul in Google in an attempt to correct some of our reporting issues, I’ve noticed that the redirect that people see once they click the link, looks pretty dang crappy. Oh how I wish there was some universal design and usability to all of these landing pages.

After recording our current conversion ratios, I suppose I’ll just have to keep an eye on them while IT uploads my redirect change to a page that looks decent. Please be quick. I’m already seeing some pretty bad conversion rates.

Updates to follow.

Peace

Update: 12:05pm

So they say it’s an easy fix depending on where the redirect is going to. Yippee! Hopefully we should see some results by the end of the day.

AdCenter Brings a Time Machine to Fruition

Ryan — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:17:14 +0000

Opening up my AdCenter account today, I was pleasantly surprised to find some custom date range setting options. Yippee! Bring out the champagne! Honestly, isn’t it like years overdue?

Any ways, why is this such a big deal to me? If you or I wanted to make any kind of trend analysis, cost analysis, forecasting, or anything similar.. custom date ranges would be probably one of your most frequented clicks. Although I am probably preaching to the choir here, I think we can all agree that having that little extra filtering is huge. Especially now when we’re trying to optimize campaigns with the resources we are given.

But while you might not be spending the money you are in say AdWords or Yahoo! Sponsored Search, AdCenter is right up there… to some degree. That being said, what kind of search distribution do you see for your own personal marketing efforts. Yeah, I know there are the overall search statistics, percentages, and market share, but how does that differ with your own information. Industry standards, audience, type of webpage… you should definitely see some variances in SERP referrals based on who you are and what you do.

Care to comment?

Peace

Web Usability and the Relevance to Lead Conversion

Ryan — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:30:55 +0000

So after a few days of trying to figure out how some of my leads were leaking through the pipes into other systems, I’ve discovered that there are many flaws within our own particular system. In our industry, or any industry for that matter, we deal with web usability on a daily basis.

What do people see first, or what are their eyes attracted to? Are there relevant links/phone numbers/addresses/email addresses there?

In my case, it was a combination of faulty landing pages, bad usability (which might take a while to get fixed), no call tracking, as well as wrong conversions pixels.. ugh. While it’s nothing urgent, a failure to see these kinda dinky mistakes can be irritating to someone who isn’t really looking… its just an issue. That doesn’t mean these people are outta the loop though. When you have a system that is working, and you have multiple account across multiple campaigns, across multiple partners, you’re gunna miss something. The thing is, if its as close to home as your own homepage.. that could be affecting everything all together, the fix could flip your world upside down. Let’s hope it’s not too huge of a 180 (ie. a 360.. but then again I guess that would be fine… I dunno).

That being said, what do I personally have to say about it? … Well,

When creating SEO campaigns, PPC campaigns, or whatever else you’re doing, make sure and create clear and simple navigation routes to your converting actions. Remember your click rules of thumb and sitemap strategies. If you have phone numbers, make them different across different campaigns, or accounts. Maybe even using call tracking to monitor just exactly the number of people coming through. Sounds like heaven to me.

Also make sure your landing pages are clear enough and inviting enough for people to want to convert. Yet… have options for other conversions as well. A landing page with a web form as well as a tracked phone number is a great asset when dealing with hundreds of people going in and out of a simple PPC campaign.

Organically, let loose in devising SEO conversion goals. SERP wise, you never know why someone is going to use your site, so give them options, but make sure you can see it. That way, later on, you’re not trying to figure out why your numbers are wrong.

Any other ideas?

Peace

Overwhelmed, but Looking for Conferences

Ryan — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:53:12 +0000

After my meeting with Christel today, all I can really say is.. Holy Crap. With Keith gone, and everyone else picking up some of the slack all around… with the added bonus that this is the beginning of the year, we’ve just recently are making some structural changes, and so on and so forth, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed. A lot.

As my job description has increased by maybe 4 or 5 paragraphs, I think I really need to take a minute or two to revaluate where I am at professional, what I think I can do, and what I’m going to have to step up to do. It’s not all too hard stuff, but the more I dig down into the system, the more I’m realizing that there are quite a few flaws that need eleviating. Quite a few. I’m all about a good challenge though. As long as I can keep my head above the water, feet moving, arms wailing, I might just come out of this alive, and when I do, I’ll be well on shore with more than just a paddle. Oh the imagery and dreamlike helplessness.

That being said, another task I have at hand is looking for some good SEO, PPC, Social Media, or just any kind of Online Marketing Conferences out there. Know of any? I’ve seen a lot of sites out there for SMX… and it’s many dates, but was just wondering if there are others. Any ways, as the week winds down, I’ll be doing a little bit more research. Just thought I’d plant it out there. It’s about time to start thinking about going home though.

Peace

New Year, New Page, Professional Issues

Ryan — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:22:27 +0000

Well it’s the new year. Goodbye 2008.

As my friends, colleagues, family, and I make our way into 2009, I can’t help but wonder what she has in store for us. Moving to Phoenix last summer has so far proved to be a great step in Andrea’s and my life. Although she’ll regret it, I know it’s for the best that we stay here and build our career so that someday, we’ll be able to move back to Seattle with some better jobs, possibly new educations, and better networking connections than when we had left. I’m confident we’re heading on the right track. And we both have some good friends to show for it.

My job aside, this year will be pretty interesting for me I think. For one, my manager has just left, and I’m now in charge of a good sum of marketing funds for both SEO and PPC. Personally, I think (Employer Reference Removed) is setting itself up for a year of potentially huge growth, expanded marketing reach, student enrollment, and more. I know its korny, but I’m pretty happy and glad to be working where I am at this point in my life, and in our economic situations. I’m feeling positive the market in general will be looking up soon though. I’m not Cramer though.

Although Andrea is almost at about the half way point in her first year, I know she’s stressing a little. Mostly from the fact that she’s away from home, but still. I can’t really blame her. Socially, I think we both can do better, and I think it’s safe to say that being more social should be a good resolution for myself. Andrea is already a force to be wrecken’d with in terms of the social realm. By the way, there a show in Phoenix on January 8th at the Rhythm Room… Snakes! Snakes! Snakes!, Small Leaks Sink Ships, and Art for Starters. Any ways, my small plug.

Well, all in all, I think 2009 should be an awesome year. Say ‘hi’ to me when you see me. Also, say ‘hi’ to each other when you see each other. I’m feeling more than confident that something cool and big is in-store. I guess all I can do is wait and see.

Peace