For all you fledgling internet barons out there – your real estate is about to increase in value (and cost). Starting July 1, pricing on .NET and .COM extensions are increasing. Reasoning is hard to come buy. VeriSign, the organization who manages the registry for those extensions merely announced that prices are increasing (so get over it).

Before you get too bent out of shape – the effects are minimal, 10% increase for .NET, 7% increase for .COM – keeping both likely within the $10 range for new domains. The best plan for beating the spike is obviously to renew any domains you plan on keeping now – and maybe decide to snatch up the ones you have been considering.

Techbargains.com compiled a handy little list of coupons for registering cheaply before the hike:

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Everyone has seen those books “for dummies” – Windows for Dummies, Excel for Dummies, Programming for Dummies, Washing Underwear for Highschool Dummies. Well I have to agree with the concept that most things in life need to be documented as if the person reading it has had no experience or is a complete idiot (usually it’s just the former).

Take me for example. I am driving to L.A this weekend to pick up my dog who is being shipped in from Australia. Having never been through this process before, I asked the people handling the shipping to send me a document about what to expect at LAX in terms of where to go to pick him up and what happens in the Customs office. I was sent a one page document telling me where Qantas freight was located and basically if we don’t pick up our unattended luggage a storage fee would apply (plus a really confusing map of where they are located). I had to email them back and say – can you explain step by step what we will need to do in a document that is titled “Picking up your pets at LAX – the Idiots Guide”.

I know if we don’t have this explained to us before we start off on our journey around LAX it’s going to lead to a cat fight in the front cab of my F150 even before the dog is on board.

This thought process needs to be applied when you are either explaining or training clients and/or new team members. For most people the terminology of PPC is unfamiliar and so are all the tools needed to get the task done. The hardest part about any new job is learning the language of the job, like acronyms for example.

Start from Year 0 when documenting even a seemingly simple procedure. Any good technical documentation assumes nothing, and it allows a person to pick up the procedure at the point where they are comfortable. Illustrations need to be helpful, not just pretty. I worked out the map for the Qantas freight office was basically upside down, South was at the top of the map. Always work with familiar if possible. Never use East, West or South as the top of a map because people will always start with the blind assumption that the top is North. Same can be said for your pretty desktop themes, Firefox themes etc. If you are creating formal documentation use a standard Windows or Mac theme when inserting screenshots.

Each step needs to be documented separately and show the results of the steps if possible. For example if I were to document a campaign set up for Adwords Editor in a Client Center environment, it would look like the following.

Windows:
When creating a new campaign in AdWords Editor an account for the client first needs to be created on the web interface of Google AdWords in the My Client Center tab. If your client account has already been created you can then proceed with the following steps.
1. On your computer go to Start -> Programs -> Google AdWords Editor and open.
2. To open an account go to File -> Open Account

Open an AdWords Account

…. and so on.

If you’ve used AdWords as much as I have, this seems overly simple. But in the next few weeks I will need to train someone, who has never used it before, how to set up a campaign in AdWords. If I trained them without these simple steps documented they could get stuck on the easiest thing, just because I didn’t point it out. Then they’re sitting there for 5-10 minutes trying to work it out on their own, which is a complete waste of time.

You also need to use this strategy when speaking to most clients about what you are doing. So many of my clients have a basic understanding of what paid search advertising is, but they still won’t know many of the acronyms of our industry, the tools we use or why something will go wrong with their campaign. If you need to explain something to a client it is probably best to do it over email first (let them know you’re writing everything down for your benefit as much as theirs) and then follow up with a phone call if they want a certain point explained to them.

For any industry, patience is a key factor when dealing with clients, but I have found that in Internet Advertising you are dealing with so many people who need to jump in on this for their business (small or large) sake, it is even more imperative to document and explain as carefully and as simply as possible. We actually work in a small industry in terms of who has an expansive knowledge of what happens and how it happens so most of our language is foreign to even traditional advertising agencies.

So document with patience, teach with patience, and write it ALL down.

With the insertion of iPad, recently announcing over 1 million sold, and the growing base of smart phone users I wanted to highlight the quick resources you have available in Google Analytics to view this level of data.

Under advanced segments there is a default segment for Mobile Traffic. This includes traffic from iPad, iPhone, iPod, Android, BlackBerry, Windows, Samsung etc.

Under the visitors section on the left hand side navigation is a drop down for Mobile which includes two sections 1) Mobile Devices and 2) Mobile Carriers

Explore and learn from the data, if you’re seeing traffic and conversions you may want to investigate tapping into this market.

Your LinkedIn profile doesn’t have to be just an online resume. Yes, it’s important to have information about your current position, experience and education; however, there’s so much more that can help you build business relationships through LinkedIn. You can pimp your profile with numerous apps and other items. Here are six tips for enhancing your personal LinkedIn profile:

I. Vanity URL

LinkedIn assigns each profile with a random string of numerals at the end of their profile URL. You can easily customize your URL with your name and/or personal brand. Here’s how:

II. Blog Feed

You can easily add your blog feed through one of the many applications offered by LinkedIn. Depending on the type of blog you have (e.g., WordPress, TypePad, LiveJournal, etc.), you will either use the WordPress application, or the BlogLink application. Because our blog, www.expertSEM.com, is on WordPress, I will use that as my example below. However, adding any of the LinkedIn apps is super simple—LinkedIn walks you through each step of the process.

The WordPress application allows you to select specific types of feeds. If your blog has numerous authors or different categories, you can choose to show only your blogs or only those in a specific, relevant category. For example, this is the feed I use on my LinkedIn profile:

III. Twitter Integration

You can add your Twitter feed in two ways: 1. through an application or 2. in your settings. If you do this, however, remember that your tweets will be automatically posted as your LinkedIn status. Be sure not to double-post by clicking on your LinkedIn account within HootSuite or whichever Twitter client you use.

IV. Share Presentations

You can add presentations and documents that you have created to your LinkedIn profile with the SlideShare application. You must have a SlideShare.net account to import documents.

V. Share Documents

Although you can add PDFs to your profile with SlideShare, you are limited to three documents. We recommend using SlideShare for your three most recent presentations, and using another app for PDFs or other documents.

VI. Strategic Anchor Text

LinkedIn allows you to add three website links to your profile. These links should direct to your corporate website, corporate blog, personal blog, corporate Facebook page or other relevant sites that you own and control. The key to these links is using strategic keywords. For example, I’ve used “interactive marketing agency” to link to the Location3 Media website on my profile.

That’s it. Easy as pie! Follow these six tips and you’ll be well on your way to an enhanced LinkedIn profile—a living, breathing representation of your professional life and an interactive avenue for establishing new business relationships.

Why isn’t my business showing up on a local search? I have all the content I need and it still   isn’t   showing up!  If you find yourself asking this question, I would suggest taking a look at all the reviews written on your profile.  Do you have any reviews?  The truth is, reviews help to increase or decrease your location position and are one of the most important factors in moving you up or down.

The tricky part however, is getting your customers to actually write them.  How do you do that?  I recently found an article that gave some great suggestions to motivate your customer.  Below is my take on these suggestions:

Incorporate Links –Search engines make it easy for customers to write reviews.  Let your customers know that it’s easy as making one extra click to write one.  Every location profile has its own link to write a review and sites like Google and Yahoo! pull reviews from other engines. This makes it easy for a customer to write only one review and still have it show up on other sites.

Use your mailing list – You already know who your customers are.  They’ve trusted you with their information, now it’s time for you to trust them and their opinions about your business.  When you send promotions out to them, let them know that you care what they have to say.  No matter what, the reviews will help the listing position, even if it’s negative.

Follow up after order confirmation – After doing business with your customers, make sure to provide adequate information, letting them know exactly where they can go to rave about your services.  They’ll be sure to tell others of your service and products.

Offer an incentive –$5 off your next purchase or more?  Automatically entered into a drawing? Getting something extra in return will not only convince the customer to write a review, but will also convince them to return.

Keep them coming back – The incentive alone is a great way to get them back in the door.  If they know they can continually get these incentives, why not come back again?

Not only do the reviews give more content to your listing, but informs your customer on the product they want and why your location is the place to get it. Encourage your customers to do it as often as possible, as you will continue to offer great service as often as possible.

It is imperative to utilize Web Analytics to make informed, actionable decisions on adjustments to your site to increase conversions. A great tool recently added to Google Analytics is the option to add annotations. This enables you to make notes of changes you have made to the site within the Google Analytics interface, so you can easily see what and when those changes were implemented, so when analyzing the impact of them you can quickly pinpoint which change(s) were effective. For those of you not using this feature I would suggest you jump on the wagon, it’s extremely useful.

Because of how PPC ads are displayed if your ad (Heaven forbid!) is shown outside of positions 1-3 or if the search engine displays most ads to the side, try to avoid copy that wraps from line 1 to line 2. Instead test ads that have 2 stand-alone lines of copy.

For example, if you started with:

{KeyWord: Business College}
Start Your Career In Business
Management. Classes Start Soon!
www.BusinessCollege.edu

Then try testing:

{KeyWord: Business College}
Start Your Career In Business.
Request Info, Classes Start Soon!
www.BusinessCollege.edu

That way you ensure your ads will read well and be less awkward no matter where they are displayed.

Jared Schroder, Location3 Media’s director of paid search and resident karaoke champ, discusses a couple recent topics in the SEM industry: Google’s new sitelinks feature for paid search ads; and what the Search Alliance will mean for the SEM industry. Jared also discusses an interesting approach he and his team have come up with for travel industry campaigns. And he ends with a helpful tip for all search marketers out there.

Through the local business center (LBC), Google allows business owners to update their location and store details that display in the search results. When editing or creating this profile, it’s suggested you include as much information as possible, which is proven to help with rankings. Although name, phone number, and address are important, a business should go well beyond and create a profile with a personal touch. Some of that customization can be done with images, video and specific content about that location.

The tip of the week is: how to add social media and other custom related links to your maps places page and have those hyper link. While it’s not entirely obvious in the LBC interface, Google does allow quite a bit of customization to these listings. In the ‘additional details’ section, simply add the web site in the left column and the URL with the http:// in the right column. This ensures the link will hyper link in the actual live result.

It might feel more natural with a campaign that you’re launching or taking over with fresh eyes, but a long-term campaign can benefit just as much from looking at your PPC data from new angles.

• Do you compare your data this week to last week and also to last month’s or last quarter’s weekly average? How about this week last year? How have the last six Tuesdays  performed?
• You may already be watching your data from a day of week & time of day perspective, but how about also for individual engines? Or also for branded vs. un-branded kewords?
• Hopefully you’re monitoring overall conversion rates, but how about for each type of conversion? How about conversion rates by match type?
• Are you checking referrer URL data and search query reports regularly?

These are just a few ideas, of course. There are a myriad of ways to play with your data and each new angle is sure to provide insight into your campaign performance. So go slice and dice it. You’ll likely come away with some great actionable data,  sound smart when you tell your PPC agency friends what you found and have a snazzy new chart to share with your clients.