For the last few months we have been running paid advertising campaigns at Google AdWords, Facebook and LinkedIn, observing striking differences between the three platforms. A major factor would be due to the different levels of targetting possible.

Each platform does allow a measure of targetting, as follows:

AdWords campaigns can be targeted:

• geographically (eg 20km radius around Sydney),
• by language
• by network (eg Google search, search partners, or display network partners)
• by device (eg desktops, phones with browsers, mobile carrier or operating system)
• by keyword
• by placement (for the display network)
• by demographic/gender (if available for display network)

Facebook campaigns can be targeted:

• geographically (eg 10 miles around specific cities)
• by age, gender, relationship status, language, education level, workplace, birthday
• by interest.

LinkedIn campaigns can be targeted by three of geography,company size, job function, industry, seniority, gender and age. Note that interests cannot be specified with LinkedIn.

Each platform allows bidding by CPC or CPM, and we tested both for each platform.
We compared the results of advertising a new online retail site providing hire services across the three platforms.

LinkedIn’s lack of targetting by interest or keyword left it lagging in third place, with the lowest click through rate, and by far the highest cost per click. LinkedIn’s suggested price for the demographic we targeted was over $4/click. LinkedIn visitors typically stayed on site for less than 30 seconds, and converted poorly.

Facebook provided the lowest cost-per-click – around 2/3 the cost of AdWords visitors. Facebook visitors tended to stay on site for around a minute, but only 10% came back for a return visit. They also converted very poorly. CPC advertising was clearly better than CPM advertising on Facebook for our client, with a much higher effective click through rate.

AdWords was a clear winner, with excellent click-through-rates, high pages per visit, low bounce rate, and solid conversion rate. The cost-per-click was acceptable, with the highly targeted campaign having excellent quality scores and numerous keywords with double-figure click through rates.

It does have to be said that organic traffic also performed outstandingly, with a high time on site, and double the conversion rate of the paid traffic. This was true for both Google and Yahoo, although Google provided 30 times the amount of traffic as Yahoo.

Google Adword’s ability to target an audience by keyword at a time when they are actively searching for infomation made it the best performer by a long way, for return on investment.

However as a branding platform for a new site, Facebook did provide a cost-effective method for a large number of impressions.

Here are illustrative figures from Google Analytics:

1. Google does not execute some types of JavaScript. So if your web page loads a Flash file via JavaScript, Google may not be aware of that Flash file, in which case it will not be indexed.
2. Google does not currently attach content from external resources that are loaded by your Flash files. If your Flash file loads an HTML file, an XML file, another SWF file, etc., Google will separately index that resource, but it will not yet be considered to be part of the content in your Flash file.
3. There are difficulties with Flash content written in bidirectional languages, for example Hebrew or Arabic languages.

Discussions

Feedback from various forums and blogs includes concerns that:

• Flash developers will get even lazier about SEO;- Some Flash sites may see large improvements in their rankings;
• Accessibility will suffer, as designers no longer bother to replace Flash navigation with alternatives;
• Black Hat SEO techniques will flourish, as they hide text in Flash files and create tiny 1 pixel Flash files loaded with links and keywords;
• SEOs will be unable to analyse why a site ranks highly, when the site uses a Flash file containing content that they cannot see;
• What Google will do about duplicate content in HTML sites created for non-Flash users;
• Whether SWFObject , the most commonly used Javascript technique for loading Flash files, will be affected by Google’s inability to execute some types of Javacript;
• Whether alternate text used with SWFObject will be considered duplicate content by Google;
• Whether XML files loaded by Flash, will be excluded, or treated separately, as per the Google limitation above;
• Whether SWF files loaded by small SWF preloaders, will be excluded, or treated separately, as per the Google limitation above;
• How will Google prioritise the content of Flash files. Will it just be one large file of data?
• What about Microsoft and Silverlight?

Making Use of the Announcements

Use deep linking to create direct links to specific parts/states of the Flash application.You can use Adobe Flex components that will update the location bar of a browser window to generate URLs at runtime. The objective is for the search landing page to be exactly at the page/state in the Flash File where the content was found. (A similar flaw with PDF files, where you land at the start of the document.) List the deeplinks in your sitemap XML file.At this stage there are more questions than answers. It will be interesting to see how the rankings for various websites change as the new algorithm rolls out.

1. Brand vs Keywords

Company XYZ sells widgets. Should they choose xyz.com or widgets.com?
Consensus is to go for the brand first, xyz.com. Next best would be brand plus keywords, for example xyzwidgets.com. And finally the keyword-based option, widgets.com.

The rationale is that you always want to be found for your business name, especially when you gain a high profile. You can always use your keywords in the titles, heading and content and incoming links. You may even have your keywords in your company name, which would be very helpful from an SEO perspective.

2. Which suffix?

Theroetically .com is for commercial business sites, .org is for organisations, .net for networks, .gov for government, and .edu for education. Altogether there are currently 21 top level domains to choose from. If possible, purchase all the relevant ones, to avoid your brand being hijacked. If you own xyz.com, try to get xyz.net. If you are an organisation owning xyz.org, try to purchase xyz.com.

If your target market will only ever be local, go for the .com.au. If you intend to expand globally, go for the .com. Ideally purchase both, and redirect them to the primary domain for your market.
Note that in Australia you need an ABN to purchase a .com.au domain address. To be included in the Australian index of search engines, you should either have a .com.au domain, or host your site in Australia.

On June 26, 2008 the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers announced that the board had approved a recommendation to expand the range of top level domains. See ICANN domain name announcement.
The final plan should be published early next year, with new names available in the second quarter of 2009. There is already interest in city-based domains, like .paris, or .brandname.
The downside is the potentially large number of extra domains you may now need to purchase, if you intend to safeguard your brand.

3. Multiple domain names

Multiple domain names can be useful for many reasons. Cater for misspelled domain names, or even setup a specific domain name for offline advertising, so that you can measure the success of different forms of advertising. If the CEO is high profile, buy their personal name as well. Even Google registers multiple domains – enter Gooooogle.com and you will get redirected to Google.com. See the multiple domain names apparently registered by Google at Google Domain List.

4. Redirecting domain names

Ideally you should have one primary domain name. E.g. xyz.com. Other domain names, such as widgets.com, xyz.com.au and xyy.com, should be permanently redirected back to the primary domain. Also known as domain forwarding. For Apache-based servers, it is most commonly known as a 301 redirect.

Avoid placing duplicate content, or token keyword-rich content on the other domains, purely for the purpose of sending traffic or generating links to the primary domain. Google views these as search engine spam, attempting to “game” the search engines. See the Google Webmaster Guidelines for more information.

If you have setup your redirects correctly, entering xyy.com will redirect you to xyz.com.

5. More on domain names

Keep it short.
Keep it catchy and memorable.
Avoid trademarked names.
Spell it correctly.

Avoid dashes if you can. A few years ago dashes were beneficial, as they helped search engines find the keywords in your title. People started creating www.the-widget-shop.com/blue-widgets/buy-blue-widgets-online-now.html, which is likely to be treated as spam by search engines these days.
If you listen to radio advertising of websites, it sounds strange reading out website names with dashes in them.

Buy it quickly. Domain names are issued on a ‘first come first served’ basis so it makes sense to get in quickly and register the best possible name for your business.

6. Domain tasting, kiting and front-running

In 2000, ICANN recommended a “grace period”, to allow you purchase a domain name and return it without cost within 5 days, in case you made a mistake, mistyping the domain name.
This led to the growth of domain tasting, where people would buy a domain, test its earning capacity by placing Google and other ads on it, and dump it after 5 days if it proved worthless. Apparently during March 2006 29 million .com names were registered, and 27 million were dropped before the grace period expired. In response, Google announced plans to crack down on profiteering from repeated domain tasting in February this year. And ICANN has a proposal to make part of the registration fee non-refundable, which will make it less popular.
Domain kiting is serial domain tasting, where people repeatedly purchase and dump, purchase and dump, the same domain name, to avoid the purchase cost.
Front-running is where domain registrars would lock a domain into their system after a search for an available domain name had been performed. There were a few US registrars who became famous for this unsavoury practice. Although they defended themselves by saying they were trying to stop domain tasting by other registrars.

Many people found that after searching to see if a domain name was available, when they returned the next day to purchase the domain, it was no longer available, and had been registered by a domain registrar. Domain name searches are logged, and also many registrars automatically contact other registrars to ask whether a domain had been registered but not propagated. This information was then used for domain tasting or front-running. Some people try to avoid having domain name searches logged by searching for only a part of the desired name, and viewing the search list results, and only searching through reputable registrars.

7. Reusing old domain names

You may choose a domain name that has been used before. It may have already been deleted a long time ago, or it may only just be expiring now.
Check the Wayback Machine to see what your domain used to be used for, to ensure you are not accidentally buying an unsavoury site.
Check what sites may still be linking to the domain, by searching for “site:yournewdomain.com” at Yahoo or Google.
If it still exists, check the Google PageRank, to see if it has been banned.
There is a significant online industry in domain names, waiting for popular names to become available, with easily downloaded software to scan for available names so they can take advantage of existing searches. Some sites, such as drophunt.com, let you search by Google PageRank and Alexa Ranking, to give an indication of the domain popularity.

8. Searching for domain names

If all the names that you can think of have been used, you may need help coming up with ideas.
Some sites with search suggestion include:
WhoIS.
If you also want to check the availability of .com.au version of domains, try:
TPP Internet.

9. Buying your domain name

When you’ve worked out which domains you would like to purchase, webqem can help you purchase your domain name, as an authorised domain name reseller.

Until recently, you had to know the actual URL, or follow a link from a Facebook page or website. Now you can go to http://www.facebook.com/directory/pages without being logged on to Facebook, and search by business name or browse by type. Facebook says pages are automatically added to the directory, although they do have a disclaimer that only a limited set of results are available to unregistered users.

The fact that you don’t have to login means that Pages can be indexed by search engines. The usual rules apply, in that links from external websites affect whether you will rank well, regardless of whether you are included on the Facebook directory. For example http://www.facebook.com/pages/wwwcostumeboxcomau/8168104555 is indexed at Google, but not yet included in the Facebook directory.

A search at Google.com for say “Barack Obama” highlights the current importance of social networking sites in search engines. Page one at Google includes dedicated pages at Wikipedia, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube. His Facebook page is on page two of Google, with his Flickr and LinkedIn profile on page three.

So if you have not yet claimed your company name at these social networking sites, you are missing out on a boost to your search engine performance, and associated traffic. We also recommend grabbing your name at these sites before someone else does, so that you can control your public image.

The downside to social networking sites is the need to maintain the content. By nature, social networking sites interact with their audience. It can be damaging to your reputation if a malicious or false statement is posted to your page, and you haven’t logged on to respond or remove the comment. And if you don’t add fresh content to your site, people won’t come back.

In saying that, it is easy to maintain content. You can import feeds from other sites you are active on, such as your WordPress blog, or YouTube. That way it looks like you are adding fresh content, and your audience keeps up with what you are up to.

You can share the responsibility for maintaining your Facebook Business Page, with nominated Facebook personal users as administrators. The viral nature of Facebook means that when others see which Pages you are a fan of, they may also become a fan.

When people become a fan of your Business page, you have the ability to send updates to their Facebook inbox, so that you can tell them about special offers.

If you are a high profile brand, you may get a name like http://www.facebook.com/pinkfloyd if you contact Facebook directly. Otherwise you end up with the standard business page naming format http://www.facebook.com/pages/webqem/17279306527 .

Facebook Ads allow you to reach a targetted audience and bring them to your Facebook Page or external website. You can choose your audience by age, gender, geography and keywords. For example if you wanted to display your ad to people in Australia over 18 who listed “skiiing” as an interest, Facebook will tell you the number of people available, and let you craft an ad.

Although it is very easy to do, if you need help, we can setup your page at Facebook and help you setup your ads.