by Brandy Eddings

This is a guest post by Brandy Eddings.  She is one of the brightest young minds in paid search and SEM. She is the owner of New Edge Media, an SEM company based in Texas. She is also speaking at Scary SEO in October.

Duplicate Keywords = Too Many Players on the Field

Use the duplicate keyword tool in the AdWords Editor to identify and delete the lower performing keywords. Having keywords that compete with each other will lower your quality scores and cause you to have higher CPC. Just as in a football game a coach does not send the entire team out for every play.

Unrelated Landing Pages = Incomplete Pass

Make sure each keyword is directed to a relevant landing page that has content supporting that keyword. Visitors will not search your website for what they are looking for. They will simply hit the back button and try another ad or link. Make it easy for the visitor to find information they are seeking and a clear way to purchase, call or submit a form. As in a football game the quarterback is not suppose to just randomly pass the ball in any direction, aim is key.

Competitors Bidding on Your Brand Name= Interception

Keep a close eye on your brand terms and make sure you do not allow your competitors to gain a higher position for your own company name. Many of the highest converting terms come from competitors brand names. Just as in a football game the worst thing that can happen is to have a pass intercepted and the other team to score a touchdown on your play.

Weak Ad Text = False Start

Make sure your ad text is compelling and relevant to the keywords in the Ad Group. Try to make your ad text different from the other ads that display for those keywords, stand out. Give the searcher a reason to choose your ad, some type of point of difference. Offer a discount or stress the quickness or easy of your site’s usability.

Broken Links = Fumble

Test your landing pages and form submission process to make sure everything works properly. You do not want to find out after spending $2k on clicks that your contact form is not working.

How can I tell a great SEO from a crappy SEO?

A crappy SEO, when asked about what they have accomplished in their career, will rattle off a long list of organic rankings.

A great SEO will rattle of results in terms of conversion as well as rankings.

Why do we optimize sites?

For traffic?

What good is traffic, in a non CPM format, if it does not convert? In fact, large quantities of non converting traffic can be costing you money that cuts into the bottom line.

A crappy SEO is obsessed with clickstream data figures such as visitors.

A great SEO is obsessed with conversion rate.

Optimizing sites for search really goes beyond simply making them optimal for rankings. Optimizing for search is also about creating conversion funnels for that traffic. It is about understanding user behavior and changing landing page design to turn traffic into conversions.

A conversion rate of 2.5% on 10,000 unique visitors is 250 desired user actions. A rate of .25% for 100,000 uniques is 250 desired user actions. Despite the similarity there is a difference.

Let’s look at the economics:

Let’s say that all of these visitors came from organic search. Let us again say SEO costs run around $100 an hour (either in terms of payment, the amount you could be making doing consulting work, or the amount you could be making working on another money making venture).

Site A, getting 10,000 uniques, is ranking #1 for the term buy blue diddley doos.

Site B, getting 100,000 uniques, is ranking #1 for diddley doos.

It takes Site A 5 hours of optimization, or $500, a month to maintain its #1 ranking, while it takes site B 20 hours, or $2000, a month to maintain its ranking.

Each conversion for these sites is worth $10 dollars.

Site A is getting an ROI of 400% on its SEO dollar.

Site B is getting an ROI of 25% on its SEO dollar.

What could Site B be doing wrong?

Perhaps they only sell one type of diddley do.

Perhaps they have poor landing page design.

Perhaps they simply lack the content the searcher is looking for.

So many things go into conversion, that an SEO that is completely consumed by vanity rankings will likely miss the boat. A ranking such as Site B’s is just that, a vanity ranking, because it isn’t turning enough of a return to be much else.

Every site has a conversion point, and analyzing that rate as a metric of success is a necessity. Even content sites offer newsletters that produce extra revenue for them.

A successful conversion rate can vary by market, but for most 1-2% can be used as a goal. Really your goal should be based on visitors, revenue, and ROI.

A good equation to use as a starting reference could be:

(RPC(Vx CR) - Spend)/Spend  =  ROI

(v=visitors, CR=is your variable for conversion rate which is undefined, RPC= revenue per conversion)

So if you have 2,000 visitors, make $30 per conversion, spend $1000 on SEO, and want an ROI of 300% your equation would look like this:

(30(2000 x CR)  - 1000/ Spend = 3 (or 300%)

your CR would be 6.66% (if you can’t do Algebra, first smack yourself, and then email me for help).

Noting this example sometimes your conversion rate goal may be too high, if so you need to fix something (i.e. revenue per conversion, your goal ROI, or your spend). It really depends on your market.

Keeping your conversion rate one of your main goals in your organic search work, as well as any other Internet marketing you do, will lead to better results than some of the more frivilous and less revenue based goals many of us cling to.

This post will seem like a rant in spots, but if you stick with it I think some of you will be inspired enough in your efforts to fill your pockets with a little extra coin; the only result that matters in our industry.

I read a post by Lisa Barone at BruceClay.com entitled Don’t Be Popular. Be Useful. , and got to thinking about how some of those same concepts translate past blogging into the actual fabric of the industry.

The ratio of self-promoting perpetrators in our industry to actual talent seems to be ever increasing.

The former is soft and glass jawed, the later is a mean spirited glass chewer.

The former has a limited value based mostly on a segmented time line, the later will be an innovator in our industry as long as there is one.

You shouldn’t really need to have me tell you which one of these two schools you fall into, but I love allegory so let me tell you a tale to help you understand what the heart of a glass chewer is made of.

Represent Miami

I grew up in a section of North Miami called Biscayne Gardens. We were about 6 miles from the Liberty Square Projects that spawned people like Trick Daddy.

When my family first moved to the area it was a fairly middle class neighborhood. By the time we left the neighborhood, one neighbor on our block had been raided by the DEA and another was shot in his front yard.

But no matter what, I loved my hometown, and as a kid I wore it like a badge.

I listened to 2 Live Crew and loved University of Miami Football.

In 1987, when I was just a kid, and in the middle of this love affair with my flawed hometown, the Hurricanes put the best team they ever had to that point or since on the field.

The team consisted of Steve Walsh, Michael Irvin, Jerome Brown, and the Blades Brothers.

The team was characterized by their brazen off field nature. They would wear fatigues on the plane to a game, talked a ton of trash, and had urban figures like the godfather of hip hop Luther Campbell on the sidelines during home games.

Neither college nor pro sport had seen anything like what they were doing, and in a way it set a blueprint for the way college football would be played, and how athletes would be perceived from there on out.

The best thing about that Hurricane team was that everything that they said they were going to do to a team before a game they did during the game.

They told you they were going to score all over you, and they did.

They told you they were going to make you bleed, and they did.

They were glass chewers. They were tough, full of heart, and anything they claimed was backed up tenfold. Their brazen nature was pure confidence, and not disingenuous overconfidence.

Now think of a pop culture image

Apollo Creed in Rocky IV.

He enters the arena for an exhibition fight with Ivan Drago, amongst pomp and James Brown singing “Living in America.” All flash, all glitz. He talks his game, and by the end of the fight he died in a pool of his own blood.

He was a glass jaw.

The allegory is simple

If your going to talk, back it up, and back it up with what is real.

What good is a #1 organic ranking for a high traffic term if you have a 75% bounce rate for the term and are converting at a clip below 1%?

That #1 term you are flaunting means you do not understand your niche, or half of your job, which is to convert, and makes you look like a clown.

A win in our game isn’t a pretty glass jaw finish, it is chewing through the thick glass to achieve the big pay day. Our game is all about money. And those that lose sight of that, opting for the nonsense on the periphery are not worthy of the high profile marketer status they covet.

This game is all about end results, and the only result that matters in the end is a return on whoever’s marketing dollar you are spending.

Don’t write blog posts about being an Internet entrepreneur unless you can point to your sites and say this is what I have done. This is the blood I spilled, and the heads I cracked.

Shoemoney is a glass chewer.

Sugarrae is a glass chewer.

Don’t write posts about how great you are at linkbaiting, show me what you have done and how it made you money.

Neil Patel is a glass chewer.

Michael Gray is a glass chewer.

Stop writing posts that are only designed to regurgitate someoneelse’s thoughts to gain the attention of the industry and prop you up as something you are not. Be a legit authority and thought leader, by testing, inventing, and not being afraid to fail.

Andy Beal is a glass chewer

Aaron Chronister is a glass chewer.

Chris Winfield is a glass chewer.

David Harry is a glass chewer.

Matt McGee is a glass chewer.

What school do you belong to?

In my opinion, this concept is more worthy a debate than the white hat , black hat nonsense so many obsess over. The glass jaws, the fakers, the snake oil salesman are the people that make our industry difficult to sell to both Fortune 500 companies and SMBs alike. They spread misinformation in order to personally brand themselves, and the result is a thick layer of misconception about concepts like SEO, SEM, and SMO.

I don’t claim to be a glass chewer yet, but I do claim my ambition to become one. The only desire I have in this industry is to lead through innovative thought, get results through creativity and hard work, and to dominate my niches through a relentless aggression. This all takes work, and dedication. Hopefully I don’t get distracted by the glistening lights of ego and short term gain.

If all goes as planned I will be showing up to future Industry events in fatigues with everyone saying, “Who the hell is that asshole?”

To which I will respond, “I am the dude that kicked you off your SERP and took your kid’s lunch money.”

All while chewing on freshly crushed glass.

Update: Some more glass chewers that come to mind

Chris Hooley aka SearchStudent aka Dude whose liver must be like three times its original size

Maybe this will become all that Snydey Sense is. One list after another of people I like.

If that happens someone put a pillow over my face while I’m sleeping.

The reality of the situation is that I wrote the last piece with six specific individuals in mind, and none of them happened to be women. There was an obvious backlash to that, and now I must defend myself against sexist allegations, even though I am actually a misogynistic (or is it masochist? I don’t remember.)

There are a plethora of brilliant women in search, but once again, and specifically for the people that bitched about certain people being left off the last list, these are people that I not only respect for their offerings to our industry, but also for who they are.

The situation this time?

We are on a flight from my home town of Ft.Lauderdale to San Jose for SES. I can think of no more uncomfortable situation for a human than sitting next to my big ass on a cross country flight, except perhaps being stuck with my big ass in an elevator.

Rae Hoffman aka Sugarrae

Rae is considered by many to be one of best SEOs in the world, male or female.

She has been involved with organic SEO for over 9 years and is one of industries foremost experts on link building and affiliate marketing. She also has an amazing understanding of how to utilize social media, with one of her media property’s, BBGeeks.com, use of Twitter for branding is among the best done to date on the platform.

Rae wrote the guide to using Facebook, literally. She has also written a slew of other informative posts on the platform including:

• Nine Reasons to Watch Facebook
• Compare People Facebook App

Rae is also one of the most popular conference speakers in our industry.

Despite all that she is, and all she has accomplished in this industry, it is none of those things that make her one of the most amazing people in this industry.

For me it is the person she is at home, and how she got into her field that really make me put Rae on a pedestal. She entered this industry by chance, doing research, and creating a website for her son Christopher James. CJ suffered a massive infant stroke only a few weeks into his life, and this left Rae, as it would any parent, looking for ways to help her child and others like him.

As a dad I can’t imagine what Rae and CJ have gone through, all I know is that the love and strength Rae has shown for her son, and the life she has worked to create from that love and strength is something I personally think about on almost a daily basis. When I get to being a little bitch about the nonsense that I might be dealing with in my career, I think about what she has had to go through to get to where she is at, and I put my issues behind me and focus.

If I were on a plane next to Rae Hoffman, a person I have never met anywhere but online, I would sit there with her for hours and absorb all the information and strength she would allow of me.

Also she is a hardcore bitch, and since I am hardcore dude (or at least I pretend to be) I think we would have fun getting drunk on the plane and throwing things at people.

Melanie Nathan aka Status Girl

Melanie Nathan is one of the smartest people in SEO you’ve never heard of. Well some of you have, especially if you are on Twitter, but she is not the “SEO Rockstar” some strive to be. She sits in the shadows sucking up and sharing knowledge about search.

Melanie has a great background in link building, and a keen understanding of social media. She is a DMOZ editor, in charge of SEO/SEM for Statusfirm.com and their projects, and got her start in this industry off the creation of her own successful site Coolights.com, which she eventually sold.

Melanie is also a mom. When I look at everything she does, the fact that she is also somebody’s mom is mind boggling to me. She is able to be an amazing SEO and amazing parent in the same time it takes me to be an okay dad and crappy Internet marketer.

Melanie is a sweet person, whom often lifts my spirits via tweets. As long as she doesn’t dare eat those ketchup flavored potato chips she likes near me I think we could have a great time one a cross country flight.

Tamar Weinberg

Tamar is one of the worlds most sought after social media marketers and bloggers.

She also has a great understanding of SEO and how it correlates to social media.

She has written for a whose who of search and social media blogs:

10e20 blog

Search Engine Roundtable

Lifehacker

Mashable

Update: Techipedia (forgot this one, doh!)

I am not sure there is a writer, outside of Danny Sullivan and Barry Schwartz, that has done as much for the development of SEO in the blogosphere as Tamar.

Tamar and I are both South Florida products so I think we should have a lot to talk about. Mainly we can talk about how we hated growing up in South Florida. She is also an Orthodox Jew, and I find anyone with that much religious fortitude to be fascinating. I mean no cheesburgers, I do not have that kind of will power.

Brandy Eddings

Brandy has turned into one of my favorite people online. She is smart and witty, and often brings a smile to my face during my work day.

Okay, okay she is more of an SEM chick, but she belongs to SEOmoz, and is involved in SEO. Also this is my list so shut it.

Brandy has been involved in SEM for roughly three years, and is now running her own paid search marketing and consulting firm, New Edge Media.  She has an uncanny understanding of paid search, and a refreshing social media voice.

On a personal level she loves Family Guy, Quentin Tarantino movies, comic books, and Army of Darkness. This means that she is obviously one of the coolest people on the planet without a Y chromosome. I think we would have fun watching Pulp Fiction and drinking cross country.

Rhea Drysdale

Rhea is the Online Marketing Director at Less Everything and a contributor at Search Engine Journal.

One of her biggest contributions to date in the industry has been her role in thwarting the evil Jason Gambert (the douche bag that wants to trademark SEO). Her article on this topic was instrumental in helping expose some of Gambert’s sockpuppetry.

She also put together an awesome post on the cannibolization of Page Rank.

Rhea is a big animal person having attended every zoo on the eastern seaboard and having received a grant from Budweiser to attend an International Environmental Enrichment Conference.

I think if I were a single guy right now I would buy a large piece of land and raise livestock. I love animals. Not in a weird, icky part of the Internet way though.

Rhea and I could talk about the evils of people’s misconceptions about SEO and talk about the wonders of the animal kingdom as she is forced to sit next to me closer than even my wife cares to.

Pamela Lund

I am pretty sure if I was single I would sell all of my possessions, move to San Diego, and propose to Pamela Lund. I am also pretty sure that would be followed by a restraining order.

She is smart, funny, and beautiful.

She is everything I am not.

We would make a great sitcom couple.

Pam’s early background was in finance before she moved into marketing, which means she always has an eye on the bottom line. She loves data and crunching the numbers, and Avinash Kaushik will tell you that is the key to success on the web.

Pamela focuses on educating clients on the concepts involved in SEO. This concept is an ideal that I share. An educated client is a happy client.

For 4 years she managed a team of over 100 writers, designers and developers who created over 2,000 websites and optimization programs for doctors, lawyers and dentists in the US, Canada, UK and AU.

She has also done some video guest posts for Shoemoney.

Check out her Girlie Girls SEO Conference Guide from her That Pam Chick blog.

Pamela loves alcohol. I love alcohol. So I think I know what we will be doing on our cross country air flight.

So there are the six women of SEO I would want to share a painfully uncomfortable situation with. I am sure your list will differ, but I don’t care, if I were Charlie these would be my angels.

I am not a people person.

It is nothing personal against individuals, I just detest the B.S. most people spit.

The problem; I am in an industry full of people that spit B.S. on a daily, if not momentary basis.

Despite this fact there are a ton of people in the industry I would love to meet and talk to. Although I dislike empty conversations with most people I understand the value that they have, and I love learning everything someone is willing to teach me.

With SES San Jose coming up at the end of the Summer, I got to thinking who the people I would like to meet most would be. Then I realized that list would be too extensive, and that if I blogged about it, it would be too much of a Sphinn bait piece. Since I hate those kind of posts (Jesus I am filled with hate) I decided to go a less douchey route.

So instead I thought I would write about the SEOs I would most like to share an uncomfortable and time consuming event with. This really narrows down my list, to not only people I respect, but also the kind of people I find personally satisfying. An empty conversation in a stuck elevator would be the worst kind of torture, so in choosing the SEOs I would share the experience with it is important to  choose not only on the basis of respect for what they have to teach me, but also someone that wouldn’t make the event more torturous.

Chris Winfield

This guy is brilliant.

Exhibit A, his Twitter presentation for SES Toronto that he had his Twitter network help create.

Exhibit B the fact that he is a mainstream media magnet.

I am not sure if anyone in our industry has a better understanding of social media, and the value of the medium in terms of its correlation to search.

He is also a pretty great guy, his personality being one of the factors that makes him such a sought after speaker.  Also he is well groomed and would be the least likely person in our industry to smell up the elevator when the air circulation lessens.

Lee Odden

I met Lee Odden at SES Toronto. Within moments of meeting me he was sharing PR and social media concepts. He was honest and insightful, and not simply spitting out information to me to prove his domininance in the space.

He is equally comfortable speaking about SEO, as he is about social media, and branding online.

From his Twitter feed, one can also tell that Lee is a big time family man and outdoors man. These are characteristics I share, and could lead for quality conversation in-between screams for help in a stuck elevator.

Jordan Kasteler

Alright this one is a no-brainer. Jordan, aka UtahSEOPro, is my partner in our new venture, Search & Social. If I didn’t like him enough to be stuck in an elevator with him, I don’t think I would start a business with him.

But Jordan is also one of the brightest young minds in search and social media. He is speaking on SMX Local and Mobile’s “Cracking the Code” panel this summer, as well as at SES San Jose in August. Jordan’s background in design and development give him a great asset in analyzing the structural weaknesses of a site, and diagnosing how to handle these weaknesses in the sites optimization. He is also a strong Digger and Sphinn master.

Jordan also has a great taste in music opting for bands like Pennywise and Bouncing Souls, and shares my love for getting his body permanently desecrated in the form of tattooing.

David Harry

David Harry is one of the most approachable individuals in our industry. I know no matter what question I have David will either get me an answer or find me someone who will. Being a young SEO it is nice to have an ally like David.

He is also one of the better SEO and Social Media bloggers out there right now, and I find his blog, The Fire Horse Trail, to be one of the most underrated Internet marketing blog in the blogosphere.

Aaron Chronister

The Mad Hat has an attitude about SEO very similar to my own. He sees the web in shades of grey, and walks along that path.

He isn’t afraid to call out nonsense when he sees it, for instance a blog post he wrote late in 2007 about some link equity double speak by Eric Ward. This is the kind of attitude I carry in my personal life, and really admire someone who can carry it into their professional life.

Aaron also has a rockin’ beard, something I can admire. He is also a hard core son-of-a-bitch when it comes to drinking, something else I can admire.

Aaron is the only person on this list I haven’t had personal interaction with on any kind of real level, but I could totally see him and myself falling out of that elevator drunk as two skunks when they finally free us.

Andy Beal

Andy is one of the most honest and geniune individuals I have met during my time in this industry. He puts out a superior product no matter what the venture is. Whether its Trackur, Marketing Pilgrim, or his book, everything Andy has done in the last year has been a great asset to our industry.

Andy is one of those guys you just feel comfortable around, and that doesn’t treat you like an inferior, even though you will likely never accomplish all that he has in his career in yours. He is down to earth, and the kind of guy you would share a Sunday afternoon barbeque with.

So I am not saying I want to get stuck in an elevator in San Jose during SES, but if I did these would be the guys I hope would be in there. So I have to remember to carry around a liter of whiskey in case it is Aaron Chronister.

As a side note I am pretty sure if any of these guys wrote a “Top Six SEOs I Wouldn’t Want to Be Stuck in an Elevator With” post, I would be at the top.