Michael Vick, Atlanta Falcons, NFL, and Reputation Management
Michael Vick, star NFL quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons, was indicted by a grand jury and later plead not guilty to federal dog fighting charges. His opponents are vocal, and are actually grabbing up PPC ads urging for his removal from the Atlanta Falcons team and suspension from the National Football League (NFL). This has quickly become a very interesting reputation management case, for all of the parties I’ve mentioned above, and also for Nike, who has signed an endorsement contract with Michael Vick. This is likely just warming up, and vocal protests are going to escalate the issue even further.
Michael Vick’s reputation, regardless of how this ends, will be tarnished forever online. Over time, search results discussing the dog fighting charges may drop from the top of the SERPs for his name, but without a positive, proactive search engine reputation management campaign, he could be feeling the effect even if things end in his favor.
As for the Atlanta Falcons, the NFL, and Nike, I think they’ll all get over this fairly quickly, at least in relation to Mr. Vick. I’m excited to watch how things pan out.
Faster PPC Management for Large Campaigns
When I joined an agency that did search engine marketing, I had no idea just how large some client campaigns would be. I went from managing a few dozen keywords in campaigns for my small sites to managing thousands of keywords with dozens of landing pages.
PPC management is a full time job when the campaigns get this large. Improving your clickthrough rate involves constantly writing, tweaking, and testing ad copy, and remembering to document when changes took place. Improving your landing page relevancy involves design, and then constantly writing, tweaking, and testing copy. Lowering bid costs without actually changing bids will be most successful when it involves both improving your clickthrough rate and your landing page relevancy.
For faster ppc management in large campaigns:
1. Keep ad groups small.
When adding 200 keywords, make sure to group them by relevant keyword themes.
2. Know and monitor your budget.
Month to month, click costs change because your competitors, clickthrough rates, and quality scores may all change. Know your highest volume keywords, if possible, and definitely the rate at which your campaigns increase each week.
3. Test on a schedule.
A/B testing ads and landing pages should happen regularly. Writing a new ad for each adgroup, each week, is a lofty goal for me with multiple clients, so monthly may work better. Note: More often may not be better if ad groups are low volume and inconsistent.
4. Download your account, sort it, and study it.
When working with clients, I pretty up the numbers in an Excel file. It works wonders for quick analysis and questions about individual keywords. Most questions can be answered offline if there’s access to my Excel files. Generally, top level numbers at the top, more granular numbers further down, and really nitty-gritty numbers are on another worksheet.
5. Spending more doesn’t mean converting more.
The long tail says that people are searching for long keyword phrases. Low volume keywords may not convert regularly, if ever. Spending thousands on the long tail each month can be a dangerous strategy and suck up strong ROI. Don’t expect spending more to result in more conversions.
VA Search Engine Marketing Meetup
Thanks to Li Evans, Bill Slawski, Debra Mastaler, Simon Heseltine, and a local small business owner for coming out to the Union Street Public House for lunch and search engine chatter. Topics of discussion this month included the AdWords Professional test and its requirements, the big names of the search engine industry, and some discussion over local portals.
My recap: Those who had taken the test seemed to indicate the AdWords Professional test is harder than most people let on, and while it’s not necessarily difficult to pass, it will require some studying of the Learning Center. Most of us did not know the requirements to becoming an AdWords qualified company, but a couple of us were familiar with the requirements for an individual.
The big names of the search engine industry discussion focused primarily on two people, the undisputed “winner” would be Danny Sullivan, who several of those attending the meetup had personally met. It sounded to me like he was not only nice, but a good businessman who could recognize trends and put a good face on the industry through mainstream media interviews.
The discussion over local portals centered around the difficulties faced in buiding community and infrastructure without busting through a budget. Those attending liked the idea of portals, but expressed concern that no portal had necessarily cornered the market in local search.
If you’re interested in future SEM meetups, check out the VA meetup page. See you next month!
