Today I’m going to be reviewing iSpionage, which says you can “Uncover competitors’ SEO & PPC keywords and strategies” as well as “Build effective PPC campaign under 20 min”. I’ve got my cup of hot cocoa (even though it’s July, I know), some Tchaikovsky playing on Spotify and I’m going to tackle this almost like a product unboxing. I’ll give you my impressions on the fly as I login and start poking around.

Getting Started

Immediately upon login in I see 3 main options: Keyword & Domain Research, Keyword Monitor and PPC Campaign Builder.

I’m a left to right kind of guy, so let’s take a look at Keyword & Domain Research.

My dad raises grass-fed beef in Idaho, so I help him with his internet marketing. One of his competitors is Alderspring.com so I threw that in the search bar to see what information they give me. I immediately zone in on the SEO Keywords tab where I see a list of keywords where they’re ranking on the 1st page. The thoroughness is impressive and I can quickly see that my competitors are making a concerted effort to rank for organic terms in addition to grass-fed beef terms. Interesting.

Next I go to the competitors tab to see if my dad is there. Yep, there he is, 16th on the list. I go ahead and click on his name and it looks like the site just ran the same report for my dad’s website, BradysBeef.com. We’ll see how accurate they are now. Hmm. Not as impressed here since it only shows 6 SEO keywords with rankings (my Google Analytics shows many terms garnering organic traffic that aren’t showing here) and at least one of the terms has an incorrect ranking (I checked it against an Incognito Chrome window and AuthorityLabs). I’ll give them a break since my dad’s site is pretty small, but it might be something for them to look into.

Keyword Monitor

Okay, moving on I went to look at the Keyword Monitor feature. Looks like I have to pick between SEO tracking and PPC tracking. I’ll go a different direction here and use a keyword for one of my larger national clients. Looks like you name the project, give it a description and then drop in your keywords. The message says it will take 24 hours to get me data, so I’ll create a couple more projects and come back to it (I do have 150 keywords after all).

Okay, it only took like 4 hours to get the data, but the SEO Rankings look accurate and the PPC keyword monitoring is interesting. With only 1 day of monitoring I can only get so much benefit, but having this data being recorded over a longer time frame would provide great historical data.

To monitor local PPC keywords it looks like you need to install a proxy on your machine so iSpionage can check your local PPC results. I was hoping to be able to set the geographic area for a campaign I’m managing in another state, but I guess I’ll hold off on that for now.

PPC Campaign Builder

I’m always a bit leery of automated PPC building tools because of how important intuition is, but I’ll give this a shake. It looks like the default Step 1 is keyword research, so I’ll throw it a bone. I get a spinner while it processes, which takes about 30 seconds or so. Looking through the research list, most keywords are good fits. A few are a little off. I selected a few and threw them in the keyword bag (not sure what that means yet, but we’ll find out).

I choose the next tab, Keyword Clean Up, and look around. I think the next step is the small “Clean >>” link (and it is) but it took me quite a bit of looking to figure that out. Maybe a bigger button there? I save the keyword list and move to the Keyword Grouping tab. This tool is formatted pretty much the same and I eventually figure out what’s going on. You select a common root word or phrase and you can pull all those over into an ad group. Once in an ad group you can then export them to the 4th tab, Campaign Builder, where you put the finishing touches on your new campaign such as bids and ad copy. After filling in the blanks you get a nice output that you could copy/paste into AdWords Editor.

It was a little rocky the first time through (upon further review, I see that like a typical guy I ignored the bright orange “Page Tutorial” button that has a video explaining how to do each step. Nice touch and I recommend you watch them before using the tool. You know, do as I say, not as I do) but I could definitely go much faster the next time through and see how this would be a nice time saver if you’re doing a lot of build out tasks.

Summary

• Keyword monitoring is accurate and easy to read
• Solid domain research
• Great way to get a fast, high-level picture of what your competitors are doing
• Campaign builder could save you a lot of time on account build out

No matter what type of business you run online, your main goal is to sell. But, many businesses online become their own worst enemy by creating conversion killers on their landing pages. Your landing page is typically the first page a visitor sees on your site, meaning it is the page that will make or break their experience. If your landing page does not sell your products, services, and brand, then it is not doing its job.

Conversion Rates

Your conversion rate, which means conversions from visitors to customers, is crucial when designing and redesigning your site. One of the ways you can measure success on your site is by analyzing conversion rate data. Everything from repeat visitor stats to completed transaction stats can help you to gauge what is working and what is not working on your site. However, before you begin to tally up the data, there are a few typical conversation rate killers you need to be aware of.

Get Rid of Clutter

First and foremost, do not clutter up your landing page with too much data. If you try to cram everything into one page, there isn’t much point in even having a website. You want the visitor to see a few key things: what you offer, why they should purchase it, and how they can make a purchase. Those three key elements are really the only things your landing page has to offer in the way of making money. Avoid pointless ads and links, as well as images, video players, and Flash animations that truly serve no purpose. While the internet allows you to add a bunch of sparkling eye candy to your site, it does not mean you need to use it.

Make Products Visible

Also, ensure that you have a clear link to your product page. Again, you started your site to sell products and services. If a customer cannot find a clear link to your product page, then your site is useless and visitors will look elsewhere. If you have products on your landing page, ensure that they have a clear and concise name labeling scheme, as well as a clear way to make a purchase. You may be using a cart system, or you may simply have a buy now option; regardless, if the customer cannot figure out how to make a purchase, they will often become frustrated and leave, thus not becoming a conversion.

Under-promise, Over-deliver

Finally, make sure you can deliver on your promises. If you advertise that you offer support, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and a visitor calls your telephone number and no one answers, chances are, they will not be back to your site, let alone be making any purchases. Always under-promise and over-deliver.

Eric Wyatt writes on internet marketing and social media, specifically on conversion rate optimization and landing page design.

Warning: This is a rant! (exclamation point added for emphasis)

Last week (April 20, 2011 at 2:45:17 PM according to the change history) I moved some ad groups from one campaign into another campaign via the AdWords Editor tool and updated it live. The ads were flagged as “Under review” and didn’t start accruing impressions immediately. That’s okay, I understand it’s a non-family product and that someone needs to do a quick glance. No big deal.

According to AdWords guidelines:

We work to review all ads in our program as quickly as possible, usually within 1 to 3 business days or sooner. Our Support team isn’t able to expedite this review process.

Therefore, I was a little concerned that the ads still weren’t approved on Friday, so I called 866-2-GOOGLE. The cheerful rep told me that it takes up to 3 days and that because it was the weekend it might take until Monday for someone to approve them. Not ideal, but fine. I will wait over the weekend.

Monday afternoon (when the mythical 3 business days would be up) I was busy and didn’t get a chance to call Google about the ads still being “Under review”. I hoped someone would have it taken care of by Tuesday. Alas, the ads were still not running Tuesday so I called AGAIN! Another cheerful rep (Tommy I believe) who told me that he would escalate it to a “specialist” (I guess you have to be a specialist to actually fix a customer issue and basic phone support is just a bunch of gatekeepers who make sure that no specialist ever wastes their time with an actual customer). He told me that I could expect an answer by tomorrow.

Hooray! The ads were approved this morning. Wednesday. Nearly a full week from when I made the change.

Am I Being Unreasonable?

Okay, I know that I’m a bit peeved by this whole process, but am I really asking too much here?

• These ads were already approved and had been running. I just moved them into a new campaign.
• The policy says 1-3 business days or sooner. Not 5 business days and a weekend. Google makes billions in profit but can’t hire enough staff to cover basic functions?
• I spoke with 2 customer service reps, neither of which had the ability to solve my problem. How many of those stupid post-call surveys do I have to complete before they figure out that I’m not happy because the rep I’m talking with never seems to be able to actually fix anything.

Come on Google!

Warning: This is going to be somewhat of a rant. The other day I was reading an interesting blog post and noticed the following PPC ad:



Let’s do a quick analysis of this ad to see what Google’s motivation might be:

• Who are they targeting? Web designers. Specifically web designers that might be interested in giving their clients a coupon (but I’m guessing those same web designers, after going through training, would probably try to get a few extra bucks by managing their AdWords for them).
• What is the offer? AdWords coupons for your clients after completing Google AdWords training. I’m sure the altruistic web designers of the world have nothing better to do with their time than AdWords training to get coupons.
• WIIFG (What’s In It For Google?) – If you haven’t noticed, Google hands out AdWords coupons more liberally than AOL handed out CDs. This is their #1 customer acquisition strategy and having web designers pushing PPC is a great move because you know they a) have websites and b) are spending money on their websites. Well played Google. Well played.

Just last month I wrote a post on SmallBizTrends.com about the growing complexity of AdWords. Comments generally shared the same sentiment. Basically, the complexity of AdWords is becoming a problem for entry to AdWords.

I can almost see some mid-twenties marketing MBA at Google sitting in his/her office and having a Eureka! moment when he/she thinks “Why not give some training and coupons to web designers so they’ll sell AdWords for us? I’m a genius.” Does anyone else see the flaw in this thinking?

Last Monday Paul Broomfield sent out a tweet asking if anyone had any experience with 7Search as a PPC engine. I just happened to be experimenting with it myself, so I sent out the following reply:



After this little exchange I had a few others chime in asking about 7Search. It seems that quite a few PPC managers are aware of the platform, but most seem to still be wondering if they should try it. I think that Roger Sikes summed it up best with the following tweet, which I will answer with this post:

Initial Impressions of 7Search

• Interface – It has a distinctly AdCenter feel to it. Gridlines everywhere and it’s laid out like an Excel spreadsheet. Very utilitarian.
• Keywords – The keyword research tool is pretty basic. It give you search estimates that (so far) have been pretty accurate and tells you what the top 3 placements are bidding. A little Overture-esque. However, there are a lot of really weird keywords that show up. I’m not sure where they come from, but they even show some volume.
• Ads – As far as I can tell, you can only run one ad in a campaign (ad groups don’t seem to exist). If someone knows how to get a 2nd ad rotating, drop a comment.
• Bids – Roger was right, the clicks are cheap. Most of them you can get top placement for under $0.10 and for many keywords it doesn’t look like anyone is bidding at all.
• Conversions – Two points for Roger because there haven’t been a lot of conversions. On the other side of the coin though, we HAVE seen conversions.

Verdict?

The jury is still out.

The clicks are cheap and the conversions are low, but I’m not going to throw the bathwater out yet. A few minutes here and there to tweak bids and edit/update keywords and I will report back to everyone once I reach a final decision.

PS If you were good at the click arbitrage game back in the early days of AdWords, this might be the engine for you.