Long the subject of speculation and prediction, the world’s most active micro blog, Twitter, announced major changes to their social network in an attempt to position their network as a profitable enterprise.  Twitter Feeds will no longer be free of the influence of the almighty dollar as Twitter unveiled its new Promoted Tweets function, which is basically Adwords for Twitter, and TweetUp, the latest development out of Idealab which is a search engine and bidding marketplace that works in collusion with Twitter.

Twitter offers advertising partners top post

On the Twitter blog, the company enumerated specific expectations of the advent of Promoted Tweets.  Advertising partners can bid for keywords to ensure their tweets reach the top of the pile once a certain keyword is searched for, much akin to the Google Adwords model.  Twitter lined up commercial partners to start using Promoted Tweets that include Starbucks, Virgin America, Best Buy, Red Bull and Bravo, and offers as example that Starbucks Tweets will always turn up first for a Twitter search for the term “coffee,” provided Starbucks continues to bid on the term.

Twitter emphasizes that they are only in the first phase of their Promoted Tweets program and insists that the promotional aspect of the tweet placement does not mean a decay of quality.  Promoted Tweets, according to Twitter, must meet a higher standard than your average tweet, resonating with users and garnering retweets to maintain its placement as a top tweet.

TweetUp seeks to establish bidding marketplace

TweetUp is a bit more complicated than Twitter’s Promoted Tweets as it utilizes an algorithm taking into account a tweet’s author, number of followers, influence score, number of retweets, along with the user’s bid for their tweet.  Keywords will cost 1 cent per impression; however, if a tweet does not meet the aforementioned qualifications, there is no bid high enough to launch it to the top of the feed (like an Adwords quality score).

All in all, major changes lie ahead for the social network taking its first steps toward monetization; however, Twitter promises the integrity of its network will be maintained, if not emboldened, as the white noise of real time updates won’t hide relevant tweets in the shuffle.

First, let’s define what a bounce rate is exactly.  A bounce is essentially when a user come to your site and leaves within 8 seconds.  Therefore, if 100 people come to your site and 50 people leave in under 8 seconds, your site has an 80% bounce rate. 

When designing a conversion optimization strategy for any website, it is important to first define the goals of the website.  And to define the goals of the website, you must determine the true business goals.  The business goals (i.e. revenue and profit for example) will define the website goals, and the website goals will determine the conversion goals that must be set. 

Any business would naturally want to reduce their bounce rate as much as possible right?  The longer a user is on the website the more likely they are to convert right?  This is somewhat true in many case but again it goes back to website goals.  So is a high bounce rate really a problem?  In some cases, not so much.  Here is why:

Scenario 1:  A home page for example might receive a high volume of search traffic due to great organic rankings from broad search terms.  Often broad search traffic from short tail keywords drives “unqualified” traffic or people simply browsing the web.  If they do not see what they are looking for they might leave quickly, but this does not necessarily mean the page is not well optimized for your target audience.  Your conversion rate for the actual users you care about might be higher then you can tell from the overall bounce rate. 

Scenario 2:  In another case, a page might do a fantastic job of communicating your brand messsage or product offering, but might simply be receiving less targeted traffic.  In that case people will quickly understand what you do without having to stay on the page longer or dive deeper into the website.

A high bounce rate can of course be a huge problem.  If your website is essentially getting the right kind of traffic and the page is not meeting your defined conversion goals, this will negatively affect your business goals.  But don’t just use “reducing the bounce rate” as your conversion goals for A/B testing or multivariate testing.  You should still use your revenue goals as the benchmark.

Here are some examples of how using bounce rate reduction as your only goal can hurt revenue:

• Removing pricing from the page can reduce bounce rate but negatively affect conversions (having unqualified users digging deeper until they find out they can’t afford your product)
• Having too many special offers, discounts, or FREE services can improve bounce rate but potentially hurt revenue because the people that are converting are buying at a discount or getting free services
• Adding too much content or too many additonal tabs to the page that will keep the user longer but distract them from the end goal – in this case it can often be a good idea to put the bulk of the additonal content and resource below the fold and focus on the calls to action above the fold

When considering conversion optimization as it relates to PPC landing pages you must consider Google Quality Score guidelines.  To achieve a high Quality Score, many things are factored but landing page quality is high on the priority list.  The days of simple pages from brand new URLs with limited content and only a large call to action are over.  Google wants to see that the page is relevant, that there is good supporting content, keyword association, good domain history, etc. 

Here are some very basic tips to acheive a higher quality score as it relates to your PPC landing pages:

• Use a URL with good domain history – for example instead of creating a new landing page for a product launch by using the product name, create a new sub page under the main company URL.  If your company website is AwesomeMedicalSupplies.com and you want to launch a PPC campaign for a new product launch (your product is “Spiderman Band Aids”), you should host the page on AwesomeMedicalSupplies.com/Spiderman-band-aids/ instead of a brand new URL unrelated to the main website.
• Have compelling content – these days PPC landing pages should have a decent amount of content especially if the URL or website is newer.  If your business is a large recognized brand, you probably won’t have to worry about quality score if your pages are set up correctly.  But for newer sites and pages, content is important.  Video content in fact is a great way to engage the users and becoming a very popular form of landing page content.

Here are some general conversion goals that are tied to revenue that can be used in a conversion optimization strategy:

• Revenue per user
• Reducing CPA (cost per acquisition)
• Return on Ad spend
• Registration conversion rate
• Click to call conversion rate
• Software download
• Whitepaper download
• and the list goes on and on…

Here are some recent comments from our PPC & Affiliate Marketing Director, Keith Posehn:

As you may have heard, Google has been on a website banning spree recently. In the last 48 hours, they have apparently banned several thousand accounts – agencies, merchants and affiliates alike. Further, they have given some guidance as to what to expect moving forward.  Here are some key factors to consider for all pay per click advertising and affiliate marketing programs:

1. Isolated landing pages and micro-sites are a thing of the past. When creating an AdWords campaign it is now essential to have a site that is ranked (and ranked well).  Addionally, is is crucial have a lot of quality unique content on these web pages.  Google seems to be placing more weight on content for PPC campaigns.
2. It is important to note that you can have a landing page, but it must be on a ranked and on a trusted domain; also, you should have a link directly to it from a page on the site that ranks well for the keywords being bid on.
3. Paid Search affiliates are largely gone – many affiliates are leaving paid search as affiliates. This is both a plus and a minus, because it means less competition but also fewer affiliates in the various networks.
4. SEO is much more important, even more so than last week!  If a site has no inbound links or trust, it will not be awarded a good Quality Score.
5. Google is not showing its cards in terms of what sites it does not like. There is a great deal of uncertainty right now.  Google is also now entering the market as a competitor directly (i.e. Google Affiliate Network)

What does this mean from an Internet marketing perspective (specifically PPC, Affiliate, and SEO)?

1. SEO and content-heavy sites are now an even more important part of PPC and therefore it is imperative to be pursuing both avenues in an online marketing strategy.
2. Every AdWords campaign needs much more content, trust and quality to survive.  This of course can be provided by Internet marketing companies as well as the brands/clients themselves.
3. A much greater level of research and care must be taken when planning any pay per click campaign.  Many factors must be considered.
4. It would be highly recommended that all e-commerce companies now have an affiliate program on the Google Affiliate Network.

We expect to see more developments over the next few weeks and will keep our readers informed!

We have talked a lot about conversion optimization for websites and landing pages associated with any Internet marketing strategies.  Here is another great page used for paid search campaigns.  Each PPC campaign will have different conversion goals depending on the company’s needs.  The landing page below is designed to increase room bookings for the Tropicana in Las Vegas.  PPC will be used to drive the traffic. 

Google Quality Score parameters are becoming much more strict.  Notice the amount of content on the page.  Landing pages now must have quality (and relevant) content in order to gain a good quality score and have a productive PPC campaign.  Many landers tied to new URLs with no history require even more content in order to meet Quality Score standards.  It can often now take time to build the score, so keep adding good content to your pages!

Many companies using Internet marketing strategies out there drive most of the traffic to their home page or possibly another internal page of their website.  The optimization of any online marketing campaign should focus on both the traffic drivers as well as where the traffic is sent.  This is especially true when using search engine marketing strategies like Pay Per Click advertising in any search engine. 

It is now crucial to use a landing page for PPC advertising in Google because it wll have a direct impact on your Google Quality Score and conversion success.  The idea of consversion optimization is pretty simple but the purpose should be understood in order to execute it correctly for your webpages.  The main idea of course is to always be improving your ROI.  There is no point in spending tons of money in online or offline marketing if you are just planning to drive traffic to your home page (unless of course your home pages acts as a well optimized “landing page”).

Here is an example.  JetSelect Aviation (a premier private jet charter service) has performed various form of marketing (online and offline), including Yahoo PPC.  All the traffic was being channeled to their home page and results had been fairly dismal.  They were recieving about one or two leads a month.  Here is an example of the home page:

Once the marketing campaign started, aggressive Googe PPC was added and four landing pages created.  The ad copy for the ads was written according to their direct business goals.  It is important to understand Google Quality Score guidelines in order to properly optimize your PPC campaign for the best possible results.  Here is an example of one of the landing pages created.  Notice the update in design, graphics, clear calls to action, simple booking engine right at the top of the page, and simple information (there is more content below the fold). 

Landing pages can really be as simple or content heavy as you want (in my opinion).  What matters really is what is above the fold and how the call to action is designed.  Of course, this all depends on your conversion goals and what you plan to obtain from your landing pages.  Those goals should be defined first before designing the page or launching any marketing. 

The initial result of the properly optimized PPC campaigns and well designed landing pages was going from one or two poor quality leads per month to five to eight high quality leads per day.  The results will of course vary depending on your business, industry, and specific goals. 

Either way, you must use landing pages with great content ands clear calls to action in order to get the most bang for your buck from your Internet marketing strategies.