Read the tweet stream from the bottom up.

Session Two:  Craig Danuloff (@clickequations) on “Quality Score in High Resolution”

#aaos10 Landing pages can only hurt QScore, not help you. L Page Q Score is not used in ad rank calculation, only CPC calculation.

#aaos10 100% match search queries w/ ad copy. Test copy 2 find best perf ad. Delete/pause ineffect keywords. Fix landing page probs

#aaos10 How to improve QScore | Align; Revise; Remove; Eliminate

#aaos10 See more about the impact of Q Score on CPC and the impact on CPC of 1 point QS change http://bit.ly/yXH24

#aaos10 Q Score gives you either a discount, or a penalty, on your CPC.

#aaos10 Ad Rank Calculated | bid X Q Score = Ad Rank. CPC Calculated | next ad rank (below urs) /your QScore = your CPC

#aaos10 QScore applied | Determines the amount you pay for each click on the ad. Also the first page bid estimate of the keyword.

#aaos10 Q Score applied | whether an ad is eligible to be shown in a partic. auction. Determins the position the ad appears in SERP

#aaos10 “7″ is an average keyword quality score. Below that, dude, its bad. Symptomatic of bad stuff in ur account.

#aaos10 BUT a hundred other positives will not overcome poor CTR.

#aaos10 CTR is by far the most impt element in QScore calculation. Good CTR will compensate for other weaknesses.

#aaos10 Bounce rates are a factor on the organic side of ranking.

#aaos10 Q Score is only calculated when the search query is identical to the keyword. CTR is position adjusted.

#aaos10 Non-factors in QScore calc | match type, adding negatives, searches not on Google.com, google content network

#aaos10 You are the company you keep re: Q Score. Your market must not be shady.

#aaos10 Landing pages must be relevant, not be deceptive, no popups, no data collection, privacy policy link, be quick loading.

#aaos10 Google understands context better than any other company. Google ‘gets’ relevance (literal use of keyword not 100% necess)

#aaos10 So if you’re doing new campaign, pay close attention to keyword relevance through entire process (text ad to landing page)

#aaos10 ‘relevance’ is esp. important when CTR is unknown (new ads, new landing pages, new keywords, etc.).

#aaos10 QS inside of Google is not between a number between 1-10. Range of scale is unknown, really.

#aaos10 Q Score shown to you in AdWords interface is average of all indiv. QS calculated in real time for that keyword.

#aaos10 Don’t screw up account history. Don’t let poor performers (keywords) just sit. It affects everything in your account.

#aaos10 Must worry about any keywords in ur account with bad CTR. This affects quality score on well opt. keywords for that account.

#aaos10 What is level of decay in CTR from day to day? Unknown to AdWords user It’s an *average* of the CTR for that keyword.

#aaos10 Factors in Quality Score Calculation | CTR, Relevance, Other | see three previous tweets for details

#aaos10 Other | Landing page copy, load time, privacy policy, popups, geography, industry, pattern of bad behavior.

#aaos10 Relevance | Query to keyword to ad copy to landing page.

#aaos10 CTR is first component of Q Score. History of keyword, of account, of display URL, geography of the click.

#aaos10 Quality Score is Google’s best guess (combo keyword/text ad/landing page) going to perform in search auction.

#aaos10 The higher the quality score, the more $ Google makes off the ad. It appears more often, gets clicked more often.

#aaos10 Quality score improves the relevance and quality of an ad. It provides feedback, predicts results, encourages actions.

#aaos10 Quality score is sweat equity. Spend money to get on page, but also must earn the privilege.

#aaos10 Quality score of a keyword is as important as its bid. How much time, attention, resources do you give QS?

#aaos10 In an AdWords auction, the high bidder doesn’t necess. win (get top position). Winner is bid X quality score.

#aaos10 Agenda: AdWords auction; what is quality score; how is quality score calculated and applied.

#aaos10 Starting now, “Quality Score in High Resolution.”

Read the tweet stream from the bottom up.

Session One:  By Brian Eisenberg (@thegrok) titled “Always Be Testing”

#aaos10 Resource recco 69 free tools to improve your website from @thegrok

#aaos10 Every day make the right decisions, and act on them. Fail faster. Learn from failure and adapt. Do something now.

#aaos10 Move beyond reports. Make an action plan. Where can you easily gain the most value quickly?

#aaos10 First, test your top 5 highest bounce rate pages. Then your top 5 high exit pages. Then top 5 lowest time spent pages.

#aaos10 Magic 3 conversion cycle: relevance, value, calls to action

#aaos10 Data -70% average checkout abandonment rate.

#aaos10 On forms, visually tie benefit next to the form. Remind customers why they’re bothering to fill it out.

#aaos10 Reinforce what dragged a visitor to your site from the ad – reinforce it throughout the site repeatedly.

#aaos10 10-15% of visitors bonce after first click.

#aaos10 Understand information scent. Site visitors are goal-driven. Help them reach their goals.

#aaos10 Keywords don’t fail to convert. The biz does. Understand visitor intent and be relevant to their query

#aaos10 Bucket keywords into ad groups according to target personas to better deliver on expectations and convert.

#aaos10 Use personas to build models to better understand your customers.

RT @clickequations: “The only one who gets paid per click is Google.” @thegrok at #aaos10.

#aaos10 Cost of click- ur paying for initiation of a conversation. Extend that conversation on the landing page. Pay Per Conversation

#aaos10 What do you serve up in response to a search query? Are the keywords a good match for the searchers interest?

#aaos10 Give non-converters stronger reasons to buy. Small changes have huge impact on customer experience w/ the site.

#aaos10 You don’t have a traffic problem. You have a conversion problem.

#aaos10 Search process: impressions>clicks>browsers>checkouts>completed purchase. Bring in traffic, then satisfy it.

#aaos10 Continual process improvement is a driving force of online marketing advantage. Plan, Measure, Improve. repeat.

#aaos10 Learn how to execute rapidly. Respond to opportunity, create others yourself.

#aaos10 No ’set it and forget it’ with Adwords, keywords, landing pages. Change along w/ Google and before competition.

#aaos10 There’s one constant in business today: change. Constantly monitor Adwords to avoid abyss.

Attending #aaos10 with @TheGrok. Going to learn lots about adwords optimization

This month I interviewed Eric Engelmann, CEO of Geonetric, an innovative software company delivering a proprietary Web-based CMS to healthcare systems nationwide.  Founded in 1999, Geonetric employs 55 talented software engineers, front-end designers, content strategists, project managers, IT staff, and marketing and sales personnel from a fabulous retro office in Cedar Rapids, IA.  I’m also fortunate to call Eric a former employer and appreciate his generosity with granting me this interview (we met at 7:30am on a Saturday!).

Eric’s interview makes the third installment in the video series with previous guests including Lynn Manternach (MindFire Communications) and Nick Bergus (new media professor at the University of Iowa).  Yet again I break my own 10 in 10 series rules thanks to the interesting conversation with a great companion – this time we clock in around 27 minutes.

I welcome you to enjoy the video below or watch it on my MotionBox channel.  You’ll learn a few things about the Web enabling health care from a savvy entrepreneur, software developer, and business leader.  The conversation extends beyond the set of questions shown below, but this is the basic framework.

Interview questions

1)  Have you always known you wanted to own your own business?  Why was it the best fit for you?

2)  When you launched Geonetric, the company wasn’t focused exclusively on health care.  When did that evolve, why, and how did you transition it?

3)  Name one or two persons who have influenced your decision-making over the years.  Why has that person been important to your success or plans for the future?

4)  Describe a couple of ways that the Web will affect the future of consumer health and medical care.

5)  In what ways has the Web evolved to empower patients and impact care delivery?

6)  How have you weighed return/benefit and investment/cost as you’ve worked to grow the business?

7)  What’s the toughest aspect of owning a small business?  Operations?  New business development?  Scaling?  Talent management?

8)  What skills and experiences do you think are must-haves for college graduates and entry-level workers of tomorrow?

Do you know -

In business

How satisfied are your employees with their daily work?

Whether employees understand exactly how they contribute to an end product or business growth?

Does every individual understand the downstream effect of what they do (or don’t do)?

What your people are really thinking about the way things are run?

Why the long-timers have chosen to stay for a long time?

What three things might rock your business world (supply chain, fabrication, merchandising, market influence, price sweet spot, etc.)?  What’s your field battle plan to minimize these shocks?

How are you continuously backfilling your forward push, building tomorrow’s competitive edge?

In your career

Do you know what you want to be doing in six months?  A year?

Do you have a practical, actionable plan to help move you right there, to that spot?

Does your boss know about your aspirations?  Does his boss know?

Do you know how you’re perceived by your peers?  Whether they value your talents?

What barriers currently inhibit your aspirations?  What success means to you?

How to be self-aware, and honestly be in touch with your strengths and weaknesses?

In life

How your kids would describe you to their teacher?  What might a drawing of you look like?

Have you ever attended a classroom function during the work day?

Do you have an unrealized dream, something you’ve ever wanted to do or try?

What did you learn from your biggest failure?

How would you feel (not what would you do) if your job went away tomorrow?

What three words do you want people to use when they describe their impression of you?

Did you make a difference to someone today?  A fellow driver, a checkout clerk, a customer, a troubled coworker?

Do you know what you should know?

Instead, the successful brand sacrifices the reluctant or uncommitted customers – letting them fall by the wayside – for the depth of emotion and lifetime value others may provide.  These ‘other’ customers are focused and fortified.  They want to take the journey with the brand and rise to the summit together.  The issue is not so much whether the brand satisfies all needs or desires, but rather the degree and manner in which it meets the target customers’ core sensitivities.

An example for me would be Land’s End.  I’ve shopped with the company for nearly 15 years.  I don’t care for all of their styles.  I couldn’t do 90% of my total shopping with them.  But I firmly believe they’re committed to quality and the complete satisfaction of their customers.  They don’t stray into fads too much, I know what to expect from them.  Their service is impeccable, and I can nearly guarantee a friendly, helpful representative if I ever had to phone them.  I know I may have to pay a little more (maybe even a lot more) when I need to buy a coat than I would if I bought it from somewhere else.  But in the long run, it’s worth it to me.  No worries about what happens if I discover a defect later or a zipper breaks.  Their brand *is* quality (from catalog to call center), and they’ve let me on their trail quite nicely over the years.

What brand do you think is dead on, start to summit?

Good content flows seamlessly from first introduction (say, a Home page) to closing thought (maybe a Contact Us page). It feels like it stems from a single source. It wraps you in a comfortable, pleasing cloak. It’s more than maintaining brand messages or established tone and voice.

I made a Facebook status update one day with these words: “Good writing isn’t easy. It’s just easy to read.” While content encapsulates more communication cues and elements than copy alone, I think the essence applies.

Go hug your content builder today.

Research indicates that peer reviews – recommendations made by friends or family – are extremely influential to a buyer’s decision-making.  A thumbs-up sign from someone who’s bought from Company X or Brand Y is like the Everyman’s Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

Those reviews, that word-of-mouth, isn’t enough though.  Some folks will want more.  Others will have never encountered another one of your customers and remain in the dark about your company’s greatness.

Your Web site is the single most important opportunity your company has.  I’m not kidding.  For fetal companies, it’s an inexpensive way to tell your brand story to potentially millions of target customers.  To project a polished, successful image even if as CEO you’re still chief cook and bottle washer.   For more established companies, your Web site is a way to engage existing customers with content and news from a trusted source.  You’re steeped in accomplishments and tradition, a veritable “Trust Us.” corporation.

So why does your Web site suck? Don’t tell me you didn’t realize.

There are broken links, missing pages, and references to your soon-to-be-launched new gizmo.  You know, the gizmo launched two years ago?  The site loads slow, can’t be viewed on a smart phone, and requires an inordinate number of clicks to complete a faulty form page.  Did I mention the lack of substantive information?

Yeah, that pride and joy you paid $10,000 for three years ago sucks.  Here are some things you can do about that (and you’ll want to do them quickly):

1. Follow The Leader.  Humans are predictable, and we follow linear patterns. While a breakout product may put you ahead of the competition, take caution when approaching your Web site.  Keep the main navigation in traditional placement along the very top or near-top of the page.  The site search box goes in the upper right quadrant.  Sometimes convention is a good thing.
2. Discover Your User Experience.  With two days, $100, a computer, WiFi connection, and benevolent volunteers (representing your target demographics) you can host your own non-scientific user testing. Ask individual testers to complete specific tasks, observing the routes they take to completion and the obstacles they encounter along the way.
3. Get A Second Opinion.  And a third.  Use in-page analytic tools like Userfly and Clicktale to gain insights about browsing session behavior. The information you gain can help inform the reconstruction of your site.
4. Put Yourself In Their Shoes. All too often, site visitors bounce (i.e., terminate a session prematurely) because they can’t figure out where to find the information they want.  Or they don’t understand where to start, where the intended point of entry is.  Determining your site’s navigation and the naming convention for category and sub-pages are often missing pieces of this very important puzzle.  Label items using plain language.
5. Back Away From The Flash.  Those cool banners and cute walk-on talking heads are weighing your site down, causing long load times.  They do nothing to further your organic search placement, and auto-starting animation (particularly if there are no user controls) is intrusive and presumptuous.
6. Make Quality Somebody’s Job One.  Someone should be thoroughly testing and reviewing the site at least once monthly.  Where do the emails from completed “Contact Us” forms go?  What happens to them? You know the kick you get when you find a mistake in the paper?  Flaws stand out more online.  Plus, what does a misspelling say about your company besides carelessness?
7. Get Moving.  It’s your reputation.  What are you waiting for?

——–

This post originally appeared as an article in local business journal the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Business Monthly, a publication focusing on small business.

Nick believes that multimedia tells a story, appealing to a consumer’s multiple facets through sound, visuals, intonation, and context simply not available in traditional, static print media.

Watch our interview here (admittedly, it’s longer than the advertised 10 minutes by double.  But he’s worth it.) or watch it on my Motionbox channel here.

As always, your comments and observations are appreciated.  Next month I’ll interview entrepreneur and Web-based software developer Eric Engelmann of Geonetric.

Nick Bergus – Adjunct Instructor, Multimedia at U of I and Production Coordinator, NLTV

1. You hold a BA in Religious Studies and an MA in Journalism and Mass Communication. How do those two tracks work to further your career objectives?
2. How well do you feel academic institutions are preparing communication students for today’s work force?
3. What skills and experiences do you think are must-haves for college graduates and entry-level workers of tomorrow?
4. What’s it going to take to turn the publishing industry and journalism craft around?  From a financial standpoint?  From a consumer consumption standpoint?
5. Do you think the adoption of social media on a business level can help or hurt tomorrow’s media industry?
6. Tell me about multimedia content and journalism.  Can they truly combine in a meaningful way that drives value through experience? Beyond simple execution?
7. You’ve won several scholarships and awards.  Would you describe yourself as a competitive person?  And you believe those types of pursuits are critical for an aspiring communicator in today’s market?
8. Define ‘convergence journalism’ and ‘nonlinear multimedia stories.’
9. From my perspective, you seem to have a strong creative/expressive side to your personality as well as a strong intellectual side.  Has this always been true?  And how might your two careers advance those needs?
10. Tell me about your affection for food.  Certainly the blog title “Death of a Pig” is intriguing. An Iowa transplant myself, I’m still trying to understand this ag-focused culture even after years of living here.

As disorganized as some people are, as seemingly random and unintentional as some of our choices may be, our minds inherently operate mostly linearly. We make quick assessments based on first impressions and related experiences.

Another way of putting it is that we’re most comfortable sorting the people and pieces of our lives into similar profiles.  And once they’ve been placed and new (often validating, sometimes self-selected affirmation) bits of data layered on top, it’s difficult if not impossible to reassociate them.  They’re stuck.  They’ve been labeled.  Same thing happens with brands (after all, those that matter to us have an emotion-based appeal, just like people and the ‘things’ in our lives).

Trouble is, sometimes we do the sorting when we’re having an off day.  Or without all the important information.  We make choices and set predictive patterns sometimes based on a flawed observation or misunderstanding.  Not only do we miss out, but remember all that stuff you’re read about personal endorsements and peer reviews and such?  Well our screw-ups can actually mean someone else misses out, too.

The lesson here is three-fold:

• Think before you speak.  That extra moment may be all you need to see clearly and without prejudice.  Leave the raised eyebrows and pursed lips out of your voice.
• Speak the facts, not the drama.  If you’re fortunate enough to have people who value your opinion, they’ll think more of you for being circumspect.  For pointing the direction without navigating turn-by-turn.
• Be receptive to conflicting opinions.  Be self-aware enough to process that your position may not be solid.

1. “I’ve been doing this a long time.”
2. “Do you have anything new going on?  That’s what we need to focus on.”
3. “It’s okay that the folks in <xyz department> don’t ‘get’ social media. We don’t need them.”
4. “I can have <your brand> up and running in no time.”
5. “Once I’ve set everything up, its pretty minimal upkeep from there.”

First, the terms {“expert,” “guru,” “maven”} and the like just don’t belong in a job title.  Those terms may be how peers and the media choose to describe someone with notable accomplishments or credentials, but those are not positions we can claim for ourselves.  My brilliant sister is not an Accounting Expert or even a CPA Expert, although she certainly knows her stuff.  Ever heard of a CEO Expert? Bah. Plus, “long time” can, at the max, be like 3 years. Thinking in terms of a recent college graduate, 3 years job experience would place them in an entry-level role, yes?

Second, “new” may be sexy. “New” may be enticing, or even innovative.  But what’s new has limited power until considered in context with a brand’s history, its product lines, target audiences, year-over-year sales trends, competitive activity, focus group findings, and sales or share objectives.  I think my grandma called it “flash in the pan.”  You must take the time to do your homework, intelligently laying a framework of trust and value in order to build sustainable relationships with customers, irrespective of the communications channel (online or off).  You gotta have more than just ‘new’ to have staying power (and if your brand isn’t in it to stay, why be in it at all?)

Run away if you hear number three, far and fast.  Not only does setting up social media platforms – using the plethora of tools – require help from marketing, design, procurement, customer service, product management, even IT – but given the cultural impact and downstream effect of becoming a socialized business, it’s imperative that every member of the organization from warehousing to accounting understand the master plan (and you better have one!).  Confusion or ignorance can lead to dissention which affects attitudes and…you get the point.

Number four is tied to number three and clearly not a quick&easy endeavor.  Social media is not free, and it ain’t easy…unless you’re having a go at it without a master plan,  just clicking around on Facebook.

Fifth is connected to four and three (funny, this is starting to sound like something organized and intentional, like <gasp!> a plan).  Unless your strategy is along the lines of Woot (and hey, nod to them for what looks to be segmented sales-oriented channels and a conscientious decision to not attempt community with a transaction-driven brand), its going to continue to require a lot of work.  Monitoring sentiment, customer service, reputation management, awareness-building, etc. – whatever the focus, maintaining a social brand is hard work.  It’s like that all-in-one knife, and the tools are all being used at once.

Any more lies you’d add to this list?