107 tips and takeaways from SMX London 2012

Posted by Wordtracker on 15 May 2012

Mal Darwen, Julie McNamee and Andrew Tobert are at SMX London this year. So far, we've gathered up 107 tips and takeaways. There'll be more tomorrow.

General

1) There's no fixed date for the launch of Google Search Plus For Your World in Europe.
@theamitsinghal, http://www.google.com

PPC

2) The basics in writing copy for your PPC ad:

• Highlight your USP - include prices, promotions and exclusives
  
• Tell your customers what they can do
  
• Include at least one of your keywords
  
• Remember user intent
  
• Use tried and tested phrases such as "Official site" and "Free Delivery"
  
• Use language that turns the wrong customers away
  
• Match your ad to your landing page
  
• Experiment
  Ben Beard, http://www.adobe.com

3) Use Google Ace to experiment on ads, ad groups, keywords, placements, ad creatives, remarketing lists etc.
Ben Beard

4) Bear in mind the types of buyer out there - survivalist, scarcity, convenience, prestige, social, value-minded, fearful, goal-minded.
Pamela Olson, King Schools

5) People buy on emotion and justify with logic. It's when they've gone past the research stage to the buying stage (and you can appeal to that emotion) that you can grab them.
Pamela Olson

6) Nobody wants to make a bad decision - they don't want DRED - discomfort, risk, embarrassment or doubt. So try to allay these fears in your ad copy.
Pamela Olson

7) Use keywords such as reviews, information, testimonials, best, comparison, cost for the person at start at the buying cycle.
Pamela Olson

8) Create a sense of urgency for those further on in the buying cycle.
Pamela Olson

9) Use the term "Your Guarantee" rather than "Our Guarantee" - your prospect will feel that you're talking to them.
Pamela Olson

10) Address fears and be more product-specific by using sitelink extensions.
Pamela Olson

11) Try testing 3-4 ads at a time if you have the amount of traffic that can handle that number. Try out different headlines, offers and USPs.
Pamela Olson

12) Use call extensions if you're the type of business that that suits - eg, if you're a restaurant or taxi firm.
Pamela Olson

13) Use keyword search queries to help increase your CTR and bring down your CPC (cost per click).
Pamela Olson

14) ENVY: Your ad copy should appeal to the consumer's Emotions, Needs, give them Validation and provide the Yay factor (make them feel they've got a deal).
Pamela Olson

15) SQRs (site query reports) should form the backbone of everything you do in PPC
Ed Schofield, Expedia

16) Start with a Broad Match strategy, run that for a couple of weeks, then start using Negatives, Exact Match, Broad Match Modifiers etc.
Ed Schofield

17) 25% of consumers scan the URL for indicator of relevance in search results, so try to have a relevant keyword in there.
Ed Schofield

18) Test attribution models and understand media impact drivers.
Ed Schofield

19) Move beyond last click attribution. Last click is last year!
Ed Schofield

20) Keyword Reports with PPC - put each keyword in its own Adgroup so you can get an impression share report
Scott Krager

SEO

21) Brands possess immense SEO power.
Marcus Tober, http://www.searchmetrics.com

22) On researching .co.uk SERPS, the key finding was that for the number one placing, social signals dominated (although Google+ data is not yet reliable).
Marcus Tober

23) Bounce rate, clickthrough rate in SERPs (search engine ranking pages) and time on site can all be measured.
Marcus Tober

24) A 40% average clickthrough rate (CTR) uplift is being seen with a three line sitelink and 17% with one line.
Ben Beard

25) Backlinks are still a major ranking factor, but quality matters.
Marcus Tober

26) Measure social media signals: motivate users to make your company more famous.
Marcus Tober

27) Become a brand and have recognizable products.
Marcus Tober

28) Google wants to rank the best site for the user, not the site with the best SEO.
Marcus Tandler, http://www.mediadonis.net/

29) Google wants to know which sites get lots of direct traffic (the user expects to see those sites as a result).
Marcus Tandler

30) Be careful with link profiles - use brand terms as well as target keywords.
@DaveNaylor, www.davidnaylor.co.uk/

31) Track keyword data while you still can - track Goals in Analytics (if you're not doing it now, then start).
Scott Krager, http://www.notprovided.com

32) Track keyword rankings - proving your case with numbers can win budget!
Scott Krager

33) Control what you can. Measure what you can.
Scott Krager

34) Share everything with your clients/boss. Transparency is coming.
Scott Krager

35) Power Articles work well: 1,000 - 2,000 words, good quality, in-depth researched material, published weekly.
Duran Inci, http://www.optimum7.com

36) Power Articles are what Google recommends; great content for the user; attracts links; is more effective in social.
Duran Inci

37) Identify pages with poor bounce rate/visits/time on site and de-index them (add no-indexes or no-follows to your robots.txt/).
Duran Inci

38) Microdata is not easy to implement but there are big wins if you do it right.
Duran Inci

39) 45% of algorithm search results are now personalized.
Craig Macdonald

40) Social and intent are going to become bigger ranking factors than links and on-page SEO.
Craig Macdonald

41) Don't assume there's only one English, Spanish or French language. The challenge is to find out the lexicons and slang of local users.
Jonathan Ashton, http://www.tbwa.com via @ShaadHamid

42) It's not a developer task to build schema.org microformats into your content - it's not too complicated.
Richard Baxter, http://seogadget.co.uk/

43) Authorship: link content to your Google+ profile, check the implementation and wait for Googlebot crawling!
Pierre Far, http://www.google.com

44) Authorship links should be to the author's page, NOT the publisher's page.
Pierre Far

45) Make sure that your rich snippets markup is correct and complete - many webmasters do this wrongly.
Pierre Far

46) Only use relevant rich snippet markup - make it visible and not misleading.
Pierre Far

47) You can find links to Google Webmaster hangouts at http://bit.ly/KqlTTk
Pierre Far

Landing page optimization

48) Look for inspiration outside the bun fight that is the search results pages - otherwise everybody's ads will end up looking the same. For example, have a look at a magazine to see how it grabs attention.
Guy Levine, http://www.returnondigital.com

49) The greatest uplifts in CTR are seen with the use of sitelinks.
Ben Beard, Adobe

50) Test your images in Facebook (check out the clickthrough rate) and whichever gets the most clicks, add to your Merchant Center.
Ben Beard

51) Don't violate design conventions - lurid colours, black backgrounds etc.
Malcolm Graham, http://www.limetreeonline.com

52) Don't make an ad too obvious eg, "Buy Me Now!" People will avoid the hard sell.
Malcolm Graham

53) An example of a very good landing page is Mailchimp
Malcolm Graham

54) If you're selling complex and expensive products you'll need lots of informative content, or people won't buy it.
Malcolm Graham

) Offer something free with lots of branding to get good conversion rates.
Malcolm Graham

55) The home page is not a great place to send PPC traffic - it's just a waste of your money.
Guy Levine,

56) Think above the fold.
Guy Levine

57) Repeat your messages - lead the user by the hand to show them what you want them to do.
Guy Levine

58) Restrict the navagation - don't give them too many options.
Guy Levine

59) Build trust - use video.
Guy Levine

60) Every landing page should have a purpose and defined most required response.
Guy Levine

61) Use convincers (mentions in the media, awards, association membership logos.)
Guy Levine

62) Not everyone is in buy mode - use information and a two step sell to get them back to your site.
Guy Levine

63) Use forms scientifically - short increases fill, long improves quality.
Guy Levine

64) Ensure a tight correlation between your ad and your landing page copy.
Guy Levine

65) Measure specific conversion actions - not page views and time on site.
Guy Levine

66) When testing buying pages, the call to action button is the biggest priority.
Guy Levine

67) Your site should say - we are experts, this is what you should buy, please buy it from us!
Guy Levine

68) Landing page mistake: visual bullying - "Buy Now" within an enormous orange button. Brian Lewis

69) Don't use too many font treatments as it's too difficult to read.
Brian Lewis

70) Don't use rotating banners - it's distracting and slows the loading of your page.
Brian Lewis

71) Use tabs for more info etc rather than long, long web pages.
Brian Lewis

72) Make text easy to ready - use high contrast. Eg, blue on a white background.
Brian Lewis

73) 'Use cases' - defining the roles of people coming to your site. What's important to them? Price, warranty, what's their level of knowledge, where are they coming from, who are they?
Brian Lewis

74) They could be there for pre-research, early research, research on your company's advantage, browsing, pice comparison, ready to buy - create content that will be useful to all these people.
Brian Lewis

75) 4 types of trust and credibility

• Presumed credibility (they already know your name)
  
• Visual credibility
  
• Industry (insignias and emblems, members of an association, "as seen in New York Times")
  
• Social (testimonials and reviews)
  Brian Lewis

76) Relevance - the landing page should represent what they're looking for. If you mention an offer on the ad, point the link to a page with the offer on.
Stephen Pavlovich

77) Attention - have a clear call to action, an image that grabs.
Stephen Pavlovich

78) Show don't tell eg, Hyundai had an ad where 40 monkeys are challenged to pull apart one of their cars.
Stephen Pavlovich

79) Read "Made to Stick" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. Make ideas simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and do they tell a story?
Stephen Pavlovich

80) Orientation - look at CampaignMonitor for a good one. Guide the user's hand as they go through their website so that they don't get lost. Make it obvious what they've to do next.
Stephen Pavlovich

81) Basecamp have great landing pages.
Stephen Pavlovich

82) Add a point of action reassurance underneath your call to action button (eg "You can cancel at a later date, there's a 30 day guarantee").
Stephen Pavlovich

83) "Steal" people's ideas with user testing, surveys and speaking to people in coffee shops.
Stephen Pavlovich

84) Google has changed its rule on Exact Match (it now gives close variations eg, plurals and misspellings) - you can revert to the old way in your settings.
Stephen Pavlovich

Cookie Law

85) 2011 Cookie rule asks for consent - May 25th is the cut-off date in the UK.
Andy Atkins-Krueger, http://www.webcertain.com

86) There are different rules for different countries - France's are some of the toughest.
Andy Atkins-Krueger

87) In the UK users need to actively configure their browser settings. But it doesn't affect analytics cookies.
Andy Atkins-Krueger

88) Your cookies should be harmless and non-intrusive.
Andy Atkins-Krueger

89) Audit your site to see if you have "aggressive cookies".
Andy Atkins-Krueger

90) Work to the lowest common denominator eg France's conditions are much tougher than Ireland's.
Andy Atkins-Krueger

91) Do a cookie audit before the Cookie law comes into force (UK). Do you know how many 1st and 3rd party cookies you drop on people's websites?
Andy Atkins-Krueger

92) One of the large Fortune 100 companies is putting the warning into a small Privacy Statement in the footer of their home page.
Anthony Haney

93) Watch what the giants are doing eg, Google and Amazon.
Anthony Haney

94) According to an Econsultancy report, 82% thought cookie opt-out is a bad idea for the consumer. But 80% of consumers thought it was a good idea.
Craig Macdonald, http://www.microsoft.com

95) In another survey 55% considered a cookie to be malware.
Craig Macdonald

96) Opt-out rates are low - only 2% for email (according to a US-based survey). So it may not be so bad when people are asked to opt-out of cookies.
Craig Macdonald

97) Even though the Cookie Law is so far only in Europe, US websites are going to have to pay attention because they have to tailor their websites to the lowest common denominator.
Craig Macdonald

Local search

98) Consumers are adapting to social at faster rates - be nimble.
Jonathan Ashton

99) Don't determine content with scripts for different languages - use a tunnel with hard links to country-specific urls.
Jonathan Ashton

100) Local operations need local pages.
Jonathan Ashton

101) SEOs must form good relationships with IT managers to achieve good results.
Jonathan Ashton

102) Make sure your local site is 'Venice-friendly' (the name of the localization Google algorithm) - build relevant landing pages for each location.
Aleyda Solis, http://www.fxclub.com

103) Maintain a flow of fresh and relevant localized content to succeed in local search.
Aleyda Solis

104) Curated user-generated content can be a great help in local search.
Aleyda Solis

105) Build citations for each location you target - collaborate with local media and bloggers.
Aleyda Solis

106) Mobilize your local presence - use tools like Screenfly to check how your site looks on a mobile.
Aleyda Solis

107) Monitor and follow local activity - stay in touch!
Aleyda Solis

More to follow tomorrow! And apologies for anything not quite right - we're live blogging and things do go wrong - don't hesitate to let us know if it does.

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