John W. Ellis | Search Engine Marketing

Pay Per Click Marketing

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or Paid Search Marketing can be the best ROI in all forms of marketing, if done correctly. PPC is often the most misunderstood of all marketing techniques because the results are judged by poor management. My PPC approach provides quality and targeted results.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization consists of quality link building, keyword research, great content, external outreach relationships through social media and blogs, and much more. I take the mystery and rocket science out of Search Engine Optimization. It is not black magic. It is just old-fashioned, time-consuming work.

Social Media Marketing

The truth is what you do in social media does affect your search engine rankings. Social Media comes in various shapes and sizes. Every company is unique and every social media marketing plan is unique. What is your plan?

Online Public Relations

Through Online Press Releases optimization & syndication, together we can make sure your message reaches a large, targeted audience. Utilizing search engine optimization techniques, your press release is also optimized to bring in high quality links & traffic.

Google Analytics Goals

Google Analytics Goals are one of the best ways to measure the success of your website. Goals are called goals for a reason. They help you measure the goals of your site. All websites have a goal, many have several. If you do not know the purpose, or goal, of your website, then Google Analytics ends up being a simple site counter. Google Analytics can be so much more. What are you measuring? The first step in setting up goals is deciding what you want to measure on your site. Below are a few examples of common site goals: Purchase Contact Form Pricing Check Check Availability Find a ...

This is me … at Connected Marketing Week

Social Media Bullshit

“If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance baffle them with bullshit.“ I have heard that phrase above many times over the years, but it has never seemed more true to me than now. This social media post has been brewing with me for a while, so bare me with me as I get out my frustration. I am frustrated by the social media crap that is spewed out by “experts”. Let’s go through my hot list of thoughts from the experts, one by one: Curate Conversation What does that even mean? I assume the root of that means to have conversation with people online. ...

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5 Guidelines for Campaign Landing Pages

You have analyzed your campaign over and over. Adjusted bids, changed budget, added more keywords, researched negatives, and so much more. It is just not working. The truth is you can over analyze online campaigns (search or non-search) to death, but if you are sending the visitors to bad landing pages, it does not matter. The best campaigns are destined to fail if the landing page is not optimized properly. Below are 5 guidelines to help you customize campaign landing pages: 1. Relevance It is essential that landing pages match the message from the ad. Follow up on the promises that led them to click ...

AdWords Campaign Experiments - PPC Video of the Week

Here is a good illustration on how to setup and test and experimental test in AdWords. AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE) allows users to test and measure changes within a campaign through low risks.

PPC Myths

A few years ago, I wrote an article on SearchEngineLand.com entitled “If Paid Search Isn’t Working Then You’re Doing Something Wrong”. I recently went back to read the article again, to see how current it was. It still holds up. The fact is pay-per-click marketing should be working for you. If it is not working, then it’s time to figure out why. Paid search marketing is often intimidating and downright scary for many people. Those fears can be based on legitimate reasons, but they often stem from common misconceptions of pay-per-click. Below are some of the myths I am often faced ...

AdWords Language and Location targeting

Google AdWords offers several options for those who want to target their pay-per-click campaigns to specific regions or languages. First, Google needs to know where the user’s location is before it can target the specific campaigns. Google uses a combination of several criteria to determine the geographic location of the searcher. Google Domains – Google uses multiple extensions on their domains to represent various countries. If a user queries from www.google.de, for example, that user will only see ads targeted to Germany. Query Specific – Google also analyzes the search query for information that would indicate where they are from. If a user ...

AdWords Text Ad Policies

As part of a constant education on the details of paid search, today I am focusing on AdWords' policies. Google’s paid search advertising program is guided by 3 main categories of text ad policies: Editorial, Content, and Link. Text ads describe the product or service of an advertiser and usually contain action-oriented copy to drive traffic to the website. Those 3 categories of policies guide advertisers to keep everyone level playing field. Below I will break down some of the details of these 3 categories of policies 1.) Editorial Editorial (and Format) policies handle the content of ads and keywords. Ad character limits ...

Trada - PPC Video of the Week

July 31, 2010 No Comments

Trada is creating a lot of buzz in the search marketing community. In a simple definition, Trada brings crowdsourcing to pay-per-click marketing. I still have tons of questions and skepticism, but willing to see how it goes.
Google Ventures recently announced it has invested $5.75 million in Trada, see details here: http://trada.com/blog/2010/07/21/google-ventures-funding/
Check out the video [...]

Say it with Cinch?

July 30, 2010 2 Comments

I like to try out new tools and devices, especially ones that allow for easy access via my iPhone.
Lately, I have been trying out Cinch. I was introduced to this tool by Dave Delaney. I like the idea of being able to add quick audio notes, or even longer, if I choose. One of the [...]

My SES Schedule

July 24, 2010 No Comments

It’s that time of year again. It’s time to start preparing for my Search Engine Strategies trip.

The Search Engine Strategies conference has some exciting changes coming this year, as it moves from San Jose to San Francisco. The search conference is now part of a bigger event, Connected Marketing Week. This week long event [...]