Entries from Category SEM

It’s time of year again – a night of exciting football and advertising frivolity.  Sunday, February 7^th 2010 marks Super Bowl XLIV (that’s Super Bowl 44 for those that are Roman numerically challenged), an annual event where commercials command just as much attention as the game itself.  Raking in as much as $3.1 million per 30-second spot, it’s the priciest bit of commercial real estate in the advertising landscape.

Over the years, folks have tuned-in to watch Cindy Crawford sip Pepsi, witness Ali Landry pop Doritos and learn that the FedEx package Tom Hanks held so dearly in the movie Castaway, ironically, contained a survival kit.

But times have changed.

Continue Reading Super Bowl, Chips and the Internet →

You read it correctly, we are Google’s favorite place!  After years of hoping, prodding, sweat and tears, I can finally announce to that Three Deep Marketing is Google’s favorite place in the United States, and presumably the world.

I would like to thank my family, friends, acquaintances, complete strangers and people who I might meet in the future; we couldn’t have done it without you!

In the mail today, Three Deep received a package from Google containing a large window sticker with a bar code, like the image shown to the right.  I have been anticipating this package for the past 10 days; ever since reading this announcement from Google.  I knew it was only a matter of time before Google would send us an affirmation of how much they truly like our organization.

What does it take to be Google’s favorite place?  A strong presence for your local business listing.  Those fortunate enough to receive this designation and a package in the mail (about 100,000 exclusive businesses)  have worked hard to optimize their local business listing on Google so that they often show up in local business oriented search results.

Continue Reading Three Deep is Google’s Favorite Place →

Before reading too much into the title, please make note that this article pertains to the paid search engine marketing practices of Amazon and Zappos.

While getting dressed this past Monday, I found that through general laziness toward laundry and a hectic travel schedule, I was left with one pair of dress socks.  These socks were getting old, and had sprouted a few holes in them through everyday wear and tear.

For most normal people, there is a clear solution; go to the store and buy new socks.   I wish it were that easy for me. The truth is that I live in the frigid state of Minnesota, and the cold weather conditions have lead me to despise shopping in “brick and mortar” anytime during our cold season, which generally runs from October to May.

Continue Reading Why Amazon is More Relevant than Zappos →

There has been a lot of chatter on the web recently about how Google better watch out, because Facebook ads are gaining on them.   While it may be fact that Facebook is experiencing a higher percentage of growth than Google (naturally, since Google has already reached critical mass, and Facebook had minimal revenue in 2008), the reports of Facebook being the next “Google Killer” are downright irresponsible.

While I cannot definitively say that no advertisers have had positive experiences with Facebook (Shoemoney’s Facebook Ads article from earlier this year is still the best example of success that I have read to date), I can say that I have had poor experiences thus far with Facebook advertising.  I’m embarrassed by how bad they performed!

As a performance oriented marketer who tends to look at campaigns from a direct response point of view, my results from an August 2009 campaign were absolutely putrid.  Even removing my direct response glasses and putting on a “brand hat” – the results were about as poor as they get.

In fact, I’m so embarrassed by my results that I’m almost ashamed to show them in public… but in the spirit of transparency, they will be shared at the end of this post.

However, I would first prefer to share what I have learned from my recent foray into Facebook ads:

• Be Specific With Your Targeting – Demographic targeting is your friend!  Find your target market and make sure you only advertise to them.

  Continue Reading Facebook Ads Perform Embarrassingly Bad →

A few weeks ago, we received a concerned call from one of our clients.  Apparently, they had been solicited by another company that offers similar online marketing services to Three Deep, and they were directly questioning the work we had done for them.  The solicitors did a great job of undermining our efforts by simply putting the URL through a free service called Website Grader, printing a screen shot, and clicking send.

Frankly, they made a compelling argument; the grade the site received was not great by any means, and was a definite cause for concern at a surface level.  Nobody wants to receive a poor grade.  At the same time, I was equally concerned with the implications of these results, because I personally built much of the site, entered content, and did a quality job of making the site search friendly for the their local market and the services they offer.

It looks bad, but it's not really THAT bad

I have spent many hours with this client over the past several years, working hard to make sure they were happy and that we were meeting their objectives.  So when the work that we had done on this website came into scrutiny, it hit me like a ton of bricks.   Were we not properly servicing this client?  How much work will it take to fix?

Rather than dwell on the poor score we received, I spent the next 45 minutes skimming through the criteria that this site used to grade SEO scores (honestly, I feel the criteria is very out of date and I don’t agree with much of it).  I then found the elements of the site receiving poor grades (90% of the grade comes from home page only) – “fixed” it – and reran the grading program.

Voila! In no time I had increased the score by 51%!  Now the site was no longer a laughing stock, but actually a leader among its sitegrader peers.

But what exactly changed on the site during those 45 minutes to actually make this site better for SEO?

Continue Reading Thoughts on Automated SEO Services like Website Grader →

Here at Three Deep’s offices, we are always talking about our craft and how to improve the service we provide our clients.  We are presently in the process of building out a model for how we can best serve our clients… and also educate them on how SEO best fits into their overall marketing mix.  Through much trial, continued learning, and a few hundred whiteboard sessions, we have made major inroads in establishing an equation as to where exactly SEO fits in to our clients marketing mix (the answer is everywhere).

Given all of the time that we have put into working on this equation, it’s a little surprising that we don’t have any excellent infographics to help visualize what we are working to achieve for our clients.  Fortunately, there are many bright minded and artistically gifted bloggers out there who can help fill the gap.  This weekend, our president Dave Woodbeck sent us the following graphic (courtesy of SEO superstar Matt McGee):

SEO Success Pyramid

You can read the full breakdown here, but the basic premise is that rather than relying on one or two tactics to simply try to “exploit” Google’s ranking algorithm, the most successful sites focus on building quality content that engages users, presents something of value, and is easily “linkable” from other sources.

Continue Reading SEO Success Pyramid – Strategic SEO →

Two weeks ago, I bared all and showed you our worst SEO project results. Today it’s time to brag a little about some good results. Not very timely coming mid-way through 2009, but here we lay out our best project from 2008

What was your most successful SEO project? What went right and why?

Our most successful SEO Project in 2008 was the re-launch of <redacted>.com in 2008.  This project was very complex from an SEO standpoint, because it involved merging two completely different web sites into one unified site.  Under a truncated timeline and much pressure, Three Deep was able to analyze the new site from and SEO perspective and give detailed instructions on how to structure the site for maximum SEO results.  Specifically, during the transition process, we were able to accomplish the following:

Continue Reading SEO Q&A – What Was Your Best SEO Project? →

Another question we answered during the RFP process for a potential client.  As you can see, they did their homework.  Fortunately, our answers to the question below, as well as our questions about performance based SEO and others helped us get the gig!

What are the practical search engine changes you see that are going to impact your SEO in 2009?

1) Personalization of search rankings is increasing every day.

Continue Reading SEO Q&A – Search Engine Changes in 2009? →

Recently, our National Sales Director for Home Improvement Contractors, Tom Audette was interviewed by the folks at Remodeling Magazine for their article, Web Marketing Makeover.  You can view the article here.

For the most part, the article provides a high level overview of what you can expect from your website, how you can refresh your website to receive more leads, and how many companies are relying on the web as their primary lead source.

While I agree with the general tone of the article (contractors need to have a web presence, NOW), I can’t help but feel as if they may have overstated a few points and left out some vital pieces of information.

Particularly, there are several points made in the article that I would like to refute (as well as several true statements):

Myth #1: SEO Is Cheap

Continue Reading Three Deep Mentioned in Remodeling Magazine →

Several of the SEO Q&A questions coming up in future weeks come from various RFP’s that we have been asked to answer.  Now that this process is over, we are displaying some of our highest quality answers on the blog.

Worst SEO project?  What went wrong and why?

The worst SEO project Three Deep worked on last year (2008) was for <redacted>,

Continue Reading SEO Q&A – What Was Your Worst SEO project? →