Finally! Google has added some volume estimates to their keyword research tool (located here). This is a good thing as you can get a better idea for the total volume of terms vs the relative strength of terms you would get through Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker (still important tools to have in you kit).

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I’m sitting in a presentation by Matt Cutts - mostly Q&A - but he showed Searchmash.com which I hadn’t see before. It is owned by Google, but totally separate and is a sandbox. Some of the interesting items are wiki results on the right instead of in the results. Same thing with images, blogs and videos. There is also a flash version.

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I’m reading the “Marketing in a Downturn” report from Marketing Sherpa and a couple of really interesting facts from their survey jumped out at me.
1) Larger companies are cutting marketing spending more than smaller companies. This make intuitive sense because marketing expenses at larger companies tend to have a lot of brand spend that is not directly tied to sales. It’s easy to make the case to cut those dollars while smaller companies are still squeezing every sale, lead or page view out of their Direct spend.
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Header tags are HTML tags that help with the formatting of headlines and section heads in your content. They are also important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because they indicate to the search engines which pieces of text are more important than others on the page. Having your most important keywords in your header tags is an important part of getting better rankings for specific keywords.

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Apologies for not posting in a while. We have been working with a new major client - www.DomainStrategies.com - to develop and launch their website as well as help develop their business. The company is founded and funded by Rob Monster (www.monsterventure.com) and is focused on partnering with owners of premium domains - such as patents.com, healthcare.com and wifi.com - and building significant businesses on the property.

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One of the principles we base our direct marketing programs on is continuity. This is especially important in the online world where each interaction is a millisecond apart as potential customers click through creative > landing page/site > order process > confirmation email communications. Continuity refers to all elements of the creative through the acquisition and early retention process. For example, through testing we know that the connection between the text in a paid search ad needs to be reflected in the headline in the landing page - this continuity confirms that you are on the correct page to “pay off” the text that you clicked on. It is important to take this message as well as the colors, images, design that you’ve introduced on the landing page and carry through the order process.

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I just posted an article on the ten steps to optimize a paid search landing page. It summarizes approaches to consider when trying to improve conversion rates. It is also the subject of the next Internet Marketing Review newsletter. Click here to read the article on optimizing paid search landing pages.