We’re one hour into the month of April. It didn’t take long to be reminded of April Fools Day! Here comes the onslaught of internet companies and their gags. Didn’t take long to find this year’s Google joke. Just Google something, and you might see what I’m talking about. Hurry, who knows how long it will stay live (well, maybe 24 hours… but who knows).

The link in the autocomplete leads to a job posting for an autocompleter: http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/uslocations/mountain-view/autocompleter/index.html

It’s funny… the first thing that stood out was the 32K WPM and working off site from Tuvalu. (that’s an island between Hawaii and Austrailia… yeah).

They even went as far to create a video:

I love it. April Fools Day!

For a historical list of Google’s April Fools gags dating back to 2000, you might enjoy reading on: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Cloud-Computing/Google-April-Fools-Day-Gags-from-2000-to-2010-a-History-734820/

That said, let’s stand out from the crowd for once (it’s funny I use ‘stand out from the crowd’, as I use the most generic stock image ever). I’ve been testing a lot of off-the-wall ad copy testing lately, but I wanted to go to the extreme. Google gave me $100 Adwords credit, and now that I have a new website live, I thought I’d put it to use.

So here we go… let’s experiment on Google’s dime. I’m bidding on keywords that I think would be relevant to my business – this is what the two ads are going to look like:

Which ones will win? And by win, I would like to say “convert more” but we have $100 to spend with some high CPCs, let’s just say the winner will have a higher CTR. I’ve got money on the ‘Tron’ ad. That programmer guy – he was one smooth dude (you know who I’m talking about).

I’ll post the results after I run through the $100. Awesome.

5. Google Adwords Search Term Report

If you’re already running a PPC campaign with Google Adwords, you might know about this feature: the search term report (sometimes referred to as the ‘search query report’). The idea here is to see what queries triggered your ads. Not only is this a great tool to see what terms your keywords set on phrase match are querying for possible keyword expansion ideas, it also can give you some juicy negative keywords.

4. Wonder Wheel

The Google Wonder Wheel is a tool that can be accessed on SERPs on the left hand navigation panel. This is a search query visualization tool that makes it easy to see related searches to a query that you might be interested in.

Because it’s Valentine’s Day, let’s Google the keyword ‘chocolate gift baskets’. When we see the wonder wheel results, some suggested queries that I might want to expand to if I were a PPC marketer would be “gourmet chocolate gift baskets”, “dark chocolate gift baskets”, or if I further expand on the keyword “gourmet chocolate gift baskets”, I find other keywords that I might like, in this case “best chocolate gift baskets”, and “Belgian chocolate gift baskets”.

3. Competitor Keyword Tags

If you’re ever looking for some new keyword ideas, just turn to your competition and see what keywords they’re interested in. It’s simple: go to your competitor’s PPC landing pages (or any of their pages for that matter) and view the source of the page. Find out if they have a keyword meta tag, and eat your heart out. Googling the term ‘russell stover chocolate’, I find a page that has given us their keyword meta data:

Not a very helpful list here, but sometimes you strike gold looking at other sites in your competitive space. There’s always been a bit of debate whether or not keyword meta data has any use. Some SEOs choose to leave out keyword meta data, especially in competitive industries. You don’t want to give away what keywords you’re targeting, do you? That said, some sites still have keyword tags. Take advantage of it!

2. Web Analytics Data

Sometimes we forget that a lot of great keyword data is right under our noses – assuming your site has some organic search traffic coming in, open up your web analytics program and look at the traffic coming in from non-paid search mediums. If you’ve got a lot of crap keywords that you’re not interested in buying traffic for, just narrow it down and look at keywords that have converted for your site, our brought you some form of positive ROI.

I love working with clients with several years of keyword data coming to their site. It’s a boatload of fun looking through 2 years worth of reports and finding keywords that have high conversion rates that you would have never thought of bidding on. Money in the bank!

1. Google Instant

Last but not least, Google Instant. Announced in Q4 2010, Goolge Instant is an enhancement to Google’s search functionality in that it shows you results on the page as you type. However, when you type a search query, Google predicts what you might be interested in based on their large database of searches that they have locked up somewhere.

Let’s say you’re a florist, and you sell roses by the dozen. By typing in ‘dozen roses c’, you’re given several suggested queries. These might be terms that would be worth bidding on or expanding upon.

In November of 2007, Sawtooth Media’s first website was launched. Fast forward to today, and we’re happy to present SawtoothMedia.com version 2.0. While I am eager to write a blog post to spotlight how excited I am about the new website and how awesome it looks, I think it would be more suitable to write about the reasons why I decided that it was time for a new website, the processes behind building and structuring the website, and how you can apply what I’ve done to your business’ website.

The Decision to Throw Away Website Version 1.0

Most of us are guilty of it. Do you know why I decided to go for another new site (besides the old site looking old)? It’s probably not obvious at first.

The entire 1.0 site was designed to show off me, myself, and I. It talked about my skills, what I can do, who I am, and the services that I provide. This is good to show off my skills, but nowhere on the site did I explain how the combination of Sawtooth Media and search marketing would grow your business and how a relationship with Sawtooth Media would bring you value. Long story short, I never spoke directly to the audience visiting my site and address their specific problems. The website was built for me, not for my audience.

You can back up why this is such an issue with statistics and site analytics: bounce rates, page views per visit, goal conversions, time on sit, etc. Copy that speaks to your audience should theoretically keep your audience more engaged. But something you cannot measure is the satisfaction of the user when they see you’re specifically speaking to them. Make it known that you’re aware of the different users that come to your site, and address their specific issues.

The Process Behind the New Site

The original Sawtooth Media site I was quite proud of. I got a lot of good compliments; it looked professional and it drove some leads for my business. But as I got deeper and deeper into online marketing, the more and more I saw that to have a successful website, you have to address the pain-points of your potential customers. Saying that SawtoothMedia.com version 1.0 was dropping the ball is an understatement.

The realization came to me during the summer of 2010 when I picked up a book called ‘The New Rules Of Marketing & PR’ written by David Meerman Scott. The book discusses today’s strategies of talking to and acquiring buyers directly. In short, it discusses how a majority of websites today are built for companies to brag about who they are, forgetting about their audience.

Think about that for a second: most websites are created without even thinking about the audience who will be visiting it. It’s sad but true: most websites today are still stuck in ‘2003-mode’, where they explain what their businesses offer, much like an informational packet or brochure.

Because of this realization, I managed to step back, looked at who was interested in my search engine marketing services, and go to work. After some thought about my business, I created three personas for my site to revolve around… I even game them names:

• Tim, the small business owner, who is interested in growing his business
• Mike, the agency owner, who is interested in offering new services to retain and attract more clients
• Derrick, the consultant, who is interested in pursuing a unique partnership for miscellaneous business purposes

So I guess I’ve spilled the beans, but that’s how I decided to organize my site. I want to communicate more effectively with my audience by speaking to them more directly, hopefully addressing issues that they’re trying to solve. Only time will tell if this strategy works, but I’m a firm believer that this site is at least more useful to the audience it attracts in relation to the first design.

What Can You Do To Help Your Site?

Step back and ask yourself: who does my website speak to? Was my site built purely for informational purposes? Is it a site showing off your skills, beating your chest like a gorilla while yelling “this is what my company does!”?

Put your products and services off to the side for once and focus on your buyers. I’ll use an example from the book I discussed above: if you’re a college designing a website, think about who you would want to communicate with and what are your goals from those discussions would be. You’d want to focus on five groups of audiences: prospective students in high school, the parents of prospective students, current students, recent alumni, and finally, older alumni.

Let’s take the first two personas above and my alma mater Georgia Tech as an example. As a proud Yellow Jacket, I know that Georgia Tech is a great school and has some excellent traditions. However, if I wanted to talk to a prospective student in high school, and then talk to their parents with the intention of turning them on to the school, I cannot talk to them from an alumni perspective. I must address the concerns of the students, talk in their tone, and understand their issues. Does the school have a good social scene, does the school provide the foundation that I personally need for a career path, etc. If I’m talking to a prospective student’s parent, my discussion and tone would be different. Parents want to know if their child will be safe, how much the school costs, why a degree from Georgia Tech is better than a degree from another school, etc.

It sounds simple, but it’s so easy to push aside. Next time you build a site, connect with, engage, and talk to your audience. Learn about your audience, find out what they seek information on your website, and give them what they want.  You’ll be happy you did.