{KeyWord: Dynamic Keyword Insertion}

Keyword Insertion is a great adcopy technique used in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to increase ad relevance and Click Through Rate (CTR). It works by inserting the searched term into the headline.

Here is an example:

{KeyWord:Buy Puppies Today}
Buy Puppies at PetSmarty Today.
Best of Breed & Training Available.

The “Keyword” part of the headline will never show when the ad is served, only the default text “Buy Puppies Today” or the keyword string that triggered the ad. The default text will be used if the search query went over the 25 characters limit.

While “KeyWord” insertion ( capitalizing the first letter of each word) is the most common used for the english ads. However there are times when variations come in handy.

Here are different ways to use keyword insertion:

* keyword  –   [ buy puppies today ]    – No capitalization, all word(s) are in lower case
* Keyword  –   [ Buy puppies today ]   – First letter of the first word is capitalized
* KeyWord –   [ Buy Puppies Today ]  – First letter of every word is capitalized (** This is the standard DKI)
* KEYword –   [ BUY puppies today]   – Every letter in first word is capitalized
* KEYWord –  [ BUY Puppies Today ] – First word capitalized AND first letter of rest of words
* KEYWORD -[ BUY PUPPIES TODAY] – Every letter for all words are capitalized
* KeyWORD – [ Buy Puppies TODAY ]  – Capitalizes the first letter of every word AND all caps for the last word

Special Case DKI Use:

1. State abbreviations
2. Brand names
3. Consistent look with body of adcopy

If for example you have state abbreviations in the headline, this is where you would want to consider carefully how to use Keyword Insertion. It is best to organize your keywords in separate adgroups that are consistent with the placement of abbreviations. For keywords such as “Lawyers in CA”, “Lawyers in FL”, would be in a separate adgroup with “KeyWORD” as the insertion to ensure the state abbreviations are capitalized properly. There is also brand abbreviations to consider. For example a brand such as HSBC would need to be in all caps to keep the integrity of the brand name. Also if for some reason you had all lower case ads text or upper casing, you could use the special DKI rules to create the same look for the headline as the rest of the ad.

As a best practice I have at least one ad in an adgroup use DKI. I usually have a mix of ads with static headlines and headlines using DKI within the same adgroup. Be wary of misspellings in your keywords, you do not want those appearing in your headline. This could have negative effects on your CTR results.  I recommend placing all your misspellings in a separate adgroup with only static headlines.

Sitemaps: XML or HTML ?

It is becoming a well known fact that having a sitemap on your website is a good thing. Search engines like it because it helps add relevancy to a site. But mostly because crawlers can get lots of extra data making the engines aware of all your URLS, how often the pages are updated, and the pages importance in comparison to the other pages on your site. So this leads me to my next question:

Which sitemap format is better? XML or HTML?

I looked to the fabulous Official Google Webmaster’s Blog for the answer: XML

XML is more search engine friendly where as HTML is more people friendly. Crawlers are hungry for data, and XML gives more comprehensive URL and meta data (when it was last updated, how often changes are made, and how important it is relative to other URLs on your site). Google suggests having both HTML and XML sitemaps is good and you can have more than one format type and submit them without a penalty. There are various other formats available however be aware when submitting site maps to Google, a HTML site map is not a recognized format and will return an error message.

A Common Miss-conception:

Sitemaps do not increase the rankings of your pages.

Google advocates it can help get more of your site crawled by making the engine aware of all your URLS and helps Google prioritize the URLs on your site. Doing so “can lead to increased presence and visibility of your site” in Google’s index.

So the circular reasoning about sitemaps is that while having one doesn’t guarantee higher rankings; it may help search visibility …which can lead to greater search presence and hopefully more traffic …that presence and traffic is considered to mean you have relevant content and obviously a trusted authority on the subject…and thus a higher page rank could be decreed. I said “could” because how exactly Google ranks a page is highly confidential plus the page rank algorithms are constantly adjusted. We do know for certain the best practices to achieve optimum page ranking as advised by the master Google. And it’s best to follow those guidelines to give your page the best odds possible.

more on page rank to come.

SEO for Photographers

Pictures and images can be tough to get good SEO results for because keyword content is limited. I happened to stumble upon one solution for this problem, as well as a great tool for artists and photographers alike, www.photoshelter.com.

Being a photographer myself I’ve seen many websites that just cannot be found easily because it is too flash heavy. Search engine spiders cannot crawl flash at this time, they can only read HTML code. What Photo Shelter does is provide SEO assistance , website creation and hosting for photographers. They also provide e-commerce shopping carts to the site. The pay scale options vary for the hobbyist ($9.99/mo) to the serious professional ($ in the hundreds).

Aside from this non-endorsed promo for photo shelter, I think it would be worth the time for artists out there to visit this site. They provide FREE webinars on Google Analytics, giving a great introduction to this powerful free Google tool and they share some nifty SEO tips.

It’s worth a visit just for those webinars. And if you so desire, they will also send you their little guide to photography and SEO called the SEO Cook Book. I’ve read it found some useful information and additional blogs they recommend checking out.

Be Found’s Purpose:

Welcome to Be Found SEO. The purpose of this site is to serve as a comprehensive resource of tools and best practices for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Learn how to increase your sites’ online visibility and grow your search traffic.