09 Jun

Issues Upgrading Google Adwords Editor

Adwords editor recently prompted me to upgrade so I did. Then the program stopped working and hasn’t worked in a week. I finally spent a few hours yesterday and today to troubleshoot the issue. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling. I tried uninstalling, cleaning the registry, and then reinstalling. Still no dice.

Finally I uninstalled and looked in the Google directory on my c: drive  C:\Program Files\Google\ and sure enough there was a ‘Google AdWords Editor’ directory full of files. When I deleted this folder and reinstalled again the program started working.… Read the rest

06 Jun

25 Idea Generators for Writing PPC Ads

By Karon Thackston © 2009, All Rights Reserved

“I feel like I’m in a rut.”  “I don’t know where to start.”

“I’ve written about everything there is to write about.”  If you can relate to these comments, you’re not alone.  Many company marketers and copywriters suffer from writer’s block when it comes to PPC ads.  Here are 25 great writing opportunities.

Ecommerce

1. Category Sales – Something like “all outdoor furniture 50% off until 1/31.”

2. Product Sales – Along the lines of “every monogrammed tote bag 25% off.”

3. Rebates – “$100 Rebate on Wireless Printers”

4. Coupons – Offer coupons for use on an immediate sale or use coupons as an incentive to get visitors to sign up for your mailing list.… Read the rest

01 May

Are ROBO Shoppers Faking Out Your PPC Conversion Rate?

By Karon Thackston © 2009, All Rights Reserved

We’ve heard it for years.  Heck, I’ve said it myself countless times before: “Click-throughs are great, but it’s conversions that really matter.”  However, consumer research over the last several years has shown a growing trend that most emarketers believed would have eased up by this date in time.  Still, one survey after another reports just the opposite: the trend is getting stronger.

What’s happening is that consumers – in increasing numbers – are researching online before buying offline (ROBO).  According to ecommerce software provider MarketLive (as reported in Internet Retailer magazine), “The picture emerging from the data shows many consumers using the web to search for deals, moving quickly from site to site, and often going into stores to buy after researching online.”… Read the rest

29 Apr

PayPal Disputes

Once upon a time, PayPal disputes amounted to less than 1% of all transactions.  It wasn’t really necessary or desirable to have a procedure to handle your side of the dispute.

In fact, in our business, we used to simply refund them and inform them that they weren’t welcome to make any purchases in the future.

The economic downturn and other factors have sent PayPal disputes through the roof for many businesses though.  Our own current rate is over 6%.  We have customer who is experiencing a 26% PayPal dispute rate and/or chargeback rate.

This all started in October of 2008 right when the stock market crashed. … Read the rest

11 Mar

Robots.txt validator

Just added to our tools section the ability to validate your robots.txt file. There are tons of robots.txt validators available but this one is slightly different in that it looks at the file from an SEO perspective – looking to see if you’ve blocked too many pages from the spiders, whether there’a sn XML sitemap, etc. It validates not only the standard robots.txt syntax but also more modern additions that are not truely standardized yet, such as the commands ‘sitemap’, and ‘allow’.

Give it a try and let me know if the validator finds any errors in your robots.txt file.… Read the rest

28 Jan

One Size Does Not Fit All when It Comes to Writing Copy

By Karon Thackston © 2009, All Rights Reserved

I shake my head every time I read one of these blanket statements. I’m amazed at how so many people still think that one size of copy still fits everyone. It’s just not true.

Here’s an example. A while back, I read, “Prospects hate being bombarded by text-heavy pages, especially on a home/landing page.” This is coming from Internet Marketing Report in relation to business-to-business (B2B) websites. I’m sorry, but I completely disagree.

Just because a website is B2B does not automatically mean every single one of its visitors will “hate being bombarded by text-heavy pages.”… Read the rest

22 Jan

Image with title attribute

It’s a very common problem that tags have a title attribute set. This is against the W3C standard and so should be avoided – use the alt tag instead.

SiteCara.com has had the site audit functionality changed to include checks for this issue on all pages checked. If you want a swift rank or ranking at all you must comply with all standards… Read the rest

14 Jan

SEO Site Review – http://www.silvaheeren.com

Daniel Silva asked me to comment on the SEOing of his site http://www.silvaheeren.com.

First impressions:

  • His home page is about his firm. Who cares? Remember the world’s favorite radio stations WII FM – what’s in it for me? I would totally swap the site around and put services first and foremost and the ‘about us’ page as a footer nav.
  • Light gray text on white background is difficult to read, give that more contrast.
  • Links into the content are grouped at the bottom and not in the text where you’d except.
  • Terms and conditions looks to be a contract – I would remove this as its irrelevant to someone visiting your site.
… Read the rest
29 Dec

jQuery – Add a default button to a page

Normally in HTML you can add a ‘input type=”submit”‘ to a page and it acts as a default button. However this only works if the input tag is within a ‘form’. I was using AJAX and found that adding a form caused the AJAX to fail. Instead I ended up with the following code:

$(‘input’).keyup(function(e) {
//alert(e.keyCode);
if(e.keyCode == 13) {
$(‘#btnSubmit’).click() ;
}
});

This adds to all input fields a keyup function that checks for the enter key and if found calls the click function on the button I want to use as the default button – in this case it’s an input button called ‘btnSubmit’.… Read the rest