Tweaking Your Windows Startup Routine

You probably have asked yourself before "What is all this crap that starts up when I turn my computer on?!"

You're not alone. 3rd party vendors load all kinds of junk software onto your computer. These programs all serve legitimate purposes, and are not intended to bog down your system, but they do. AIM, Antivirus programs, all of the little programs sitting in your task bar, and some programs you can’t see all contribute to the performance of your system.

Disabling unused Windows Startup Applications

The following steps will teach you how to remove programs and services from the startup sequence. Doing this will free up RAM memory, since those programs will not be running any more. It will also dramatically increase the time that your computer takes to turn on. To use this feature make sure you are logged in as an administrator.

1. Click Start, then Run, and type msconfig in and press OK. A small System Configuration Utility dialog box will appear with many options like General, System.ini Win.ini, Boot.ini, Services, Startup and Tools. For now, we're going to ignore all of them except the Startup tab.

2. Click on the Startup tab and uncheck the applications that you want to disable from your Windows startup sequence.

3. Now click on Apply button to implement the changes, and restart your computer to put the changes into effect.

Go through the list and look for any familiar programs and disable those first, then go back and look at the unfamiliar programs and try to find out what application they belong to, Google the process name like ctfmon.exe and it should come up with a detailed use for the program in the listings and if it’s harmful or just a system program.

Voila! When your computer restarts, you will receive a notice that there were changes made to your startup sequence. This is normal. Check the "Do not show me this again" box and click OK!

Could You Imagine Still Being on Dial-Up Internet?

Oddly enough, according to a new study released shows that 62% of current dial-up users have NO interest in going to broadband!

When asked what it would take to tempt them to switch, 35% said the price of broadband would have to fall, while almost a fifth said that nothing would tempt them to upgrade, suggesting many die-hard dial-up users simply don't see the need for the higher speeds that are available.

About 3.5% of the visitors to our website are still on dial-up as well.

You can read more of this article over on PCPro

My Computer Died. What Now?!

Computer problems are frustrating. Becoming frustrated during the troubleshooting process will only lead to more problems. So the important thing to do first is take a deep breath, think happy thoughts, and plan out your course of action. Have tools ready, restore disks and drivers. This will save you time and patience.

Before you begin, jot down notes about any recent activity you have taken: Have there been any software changes? Did you recently add any new hardware? Did you unplug the PC and move it across the room?

If there have been no changes to the PC or its environment, then its time to pay attention to precisely what happens, if anything, when the PC boots.

Your first clues will be given during the POWER ON SELF TEST (POST). A successful test results in a short, single beep. This means that the BIOS received no errors from the hardware initializing during the boot process. If there was a problem, the BIOS would issue a beep code specific to the BIOS manufacturer that describes the nature of the problem. It is important to know what BIOS is on your motherboard. You can determine this by watching the name that flashes in the upper left corner during boot, or by opening the case open and looking for the BIOS chip. Common BIOS manufacturers are AMI BIOS, AWARD and PHOENIX. An example of an Award BIOS beep code for a video card problem would be one long beep followed by two short beeps.

If you get no beep code, and everything seems to be spinning inside the case, then the main culprit is probably the processor.

Memory – Memory errors could generate a “201: Memory Error” message on the screen. Any error codes beginning with 2 indicate a memory error.

Keyboard – a problem with the keyboard will result in a “301: Keyboard Failure” error message followed by a short beep. System may halt or may ignore the error.

Floppy – any problems will result in a “601: Floppy Disk” error code appearing on the screen.

The Power Supply, or PSU – another main culprit in hardware failures. The Power Supply is the first connection to the outside world and can be damaged by unclean power, brown-outs, spikes and blackouts. The PSU will appear to function normally, but may actually be damaged. If you're lucky nothing will happen when you press the power button. Nothing at all. But usually the lights will flash, the hard drives will spin, and you will immediately eliminate the PSU because it appears to be functioning correctly. Thus, you are taken down a frustrating road of trial and error while attempting to find the source of the hardware problem.

Since power supplies are relatively inexpensive and by far the easiest piece of hardware to swap out. We recommend replacing this first if there are no POST codes or hints to any other device being bad.

Software Troubleshooting

If the PC passes the POST, the hard drive begins to load the operating system into memory. Software no w takes over and will sometimes generate errors at this point. If you cannot boot properly at this point in the game, then you should first see if you can get into SAFE MODE. Safe Mode is accomplished by repeatedly pressing the F8 key during this critical moment . A new menu will appear with boot options. You can choose Safe Mode here or a Step by Step Confirmation that will ask you to confirm when loading devices and drivers. Keep your note pad handy because if you choose this option, you will need to know exactly what failed.

If, by luck, you are able to get into Windows, you can then run Scandisk (or CHKDSK) to determine if something is wrong with the file structure. Or you can navigate to the Device Manager in the Control Panel (under SYSTEM) to get a visual on any devices that have errors or or conflicts. You can disable hardware here or update drivers.

In Conclusion, Whatever the problem is, it's important to take a step back and look at the situation. Is it hardware or software? Did I change anything? Do I have a backup? Maybe I should simply reformat and reinstall? Or perhaps I have a virus or Trojan?

Routinely backup your important documents [read our blog on backing up], do basic preventive maintenance on the fans and keyboard with compress air, use an Uninterruptible Power Source for your power supply, routinely update your virus definitions, and defrag monthly. These are a few of the basic techniques that will keep things running smooth.

No More Windows XP?

Not quite yet, at least not completely. Microsoft has laid to rest rumors that it might reconsider pulling Windows XP from retail shelves and from most PC makers next Monday. Large manufacturer's like Dell have already announced their intentions to charge a $50 penalty per computer than comes loaded with XP instead of Vista! Quite a price to pay when it actually cost less than Vista..

Microsoft's Bill Veghte wrote to customers reiterating that June 30 would be the deadline when Microsoft halts shipments of boxed copies to retailers and stops licensing the operating system directly to OEMs. However, Veghte did leave the door open to all computer makers, even the largest, who want to continue selling new PCs with XP pre-installed. 'Additionally, Systems Builders (sometimes referred to as "local OEMs"), may continue to purchase Windows XP through Authorized Distributors through January 31, 2009,' he wrote in the letter. 'All OEMs, including major OEMs, have this option,' said Veghte.

At the same time, Microsoft confirmed Windows 7 would ship in January 2010. Who, if they have not already, would install Vista now?

Does Your Computer Run Like a Snail?

As a working PC tech, this is one of the most common issues that I face day in and day out. Although it happens to varying degrees, everyone at some point realizes that their computer is not performing like it used to. To some the slowdown process is gradual, to the point where they hardly notice until someone else uses their computer and complains. For others, it happens very quickly so that there is a sudden and unmistakable loss of usability. Whichever is the case for you, here are some general guidelines to help you in diagnosing the cause (or causes) of the slowdown.

The first thing I suspect when someone tells me that their PC is running slowly is that they may be dealing with adware or spyware. Typically, a computer infected with this type of malware will display other symptoms as well. Odd behavior such as pop-up ads, your internet home page changing, sudden closing of your browser or even system crashes are all symptomatic of a Spyware/adware infestation. Whether or not you are experiencing any of these additional symptoms, you should scan your PC with a good antivirus/antispyware program. My personal favorite is AVG Internet Security and I highly recommend it. Whichever program you use though, just make sure it has a good reputation.

Another common source of system slowdowns is a highly fragmented hard disk. Disk fragmentation happens over a period of time and may happen so gradually that you don't even realize how poorly your computer is performing. Fragmentation usually doesn't cause other symptoms, so if your PC is otherwise acting OK then fragmentation may be the problem. Windows has a built in defrag utility, however it will not defragment especially large files and some system files such as your Paging File (sometimes called the Swap File) or the Master File Table. To run at peak performance you should use a third party defrag utility such as Diskeeper. Third party programs 'one-up' the built in Windows utility because they have the advanced features that allow you to defrag the entire drive.

Lastly, another reason many PC's start to lose performance over time is that too many programs are running in the background. This happens over time because software developers assume that you want to run their application every time you're at your computer. So for your "convenience" they helpfully add their app to the startup group. That's fine except by the time you've added 30 or 40 new programs to your computer, you've got 30 or 40 programs starting up automatically every time you boot your computer. With all these programs hogging precious resources from your system, there isn't much left to do the things that you want to do.

Maximizing Your Virtual Memory

Windows XP is an example of a typical operating system that has virtual memory. Windows has an intelligent virtual memory manager that uses a default setting to help Windows allocate hard drive space for virtual memory as needed. For most circumstances, this should meet your needs, but you may want to manually configure virtual memory, especially if you have more than one physical hard drive or speed-critical applications.

To adjust your virtual memory:

1. Click Start and open the Control Panel. Double-click on System. The system dialog window will open.

2. Click on the Performance tab and then click on the Virtual Memory button.

3. Click on the option that says Let me specify my own virtual memory settings. This will make the options below that statement become active.

4. Click on the drop-down list beside Hard disk: to select the hard drive that you wish to configure virtual memory for. Remember that a good rule of thumb is to equally split virtual memory between the physical hard disks you have.

5. In the Minimum: and Maximum: box, enter 3x the amount of physical memory you have. For example, if your system has 1024MB (or 1 GB) of DDR RAM, enter 3072 into both boxes. When Windows is allowed to manage the paging file on it's own, it is constantly adjusting the size, decreasing your system's performance. These changes will set the paging file to it's maximum recommended size permanently. This also prevents the paging file from becoming fragmented.

6. Click Set to put the new settings into effect, then click OK and restart your computer to finish.

The amount of hard drive space you allocate for virtual memory is important. If you allocate too little, you will get "Out of Memory" errors. If you find that you need to keep increasing the size of the virtual memory, you probably are also finding that your system is sluggish and accesses the hard drive constantly. In that case, you should consider buying more RAM to keep the ratio between RAM and virtual memory about 3:1. Some applications enjoy having lots of virtual memory space but do not access it very much. In that case, large paging files work well.

Another factor in the performance of virtual memory is the location of the pagefile. If your system has multiple physical hard drives (not multiple drive letters, but actual drives), you can spread the work among them by making smaller pagefiles on each drive. This simple modification will significantly speed up any system that makes heavy use of virtual memory.

Windows XP Optimization Tweaks - Part 1

A customer asks: My new Dell computer is really slow. The other article on turning off programs (How to Disable Auto-Start Applications on Startup) helped a lot, but is there anything else I can do?

My answer: YES! As a computer and network technician, I have visited many clients who wanted me to fix a certain issue that had nothing to do with the speed and 'pep' of their system. As we sat together waiting (for quite a while) for screens to load, programs to open, and things to download, I would always ask, "Would you like your system to work faster than it does?". The answer was always a resounding 'YES!'.

After performing a few simple tweaks, their PCs spring to life and you can literally hear squeals of delight as pages pop up, browsers display information as they should (unless you are on dial-up, that always takes longer), and programs launch right away!


Tip #1: Turn Off The Eye Candy!

Some of the visual effects are nice to have and don't negatively impact your performance. Removing them can drastically speed up your computer!

• Show Window Contents While Dragging
• Smooth Edges of Screen Fonts
• Use Drop Shadows for Icon Labels on Desktop
• Show Translucent Selection Triangle
• You will have to wait a few seconds while the changes take effect. As soon as they do, you will notice a significant increase in your PC's performance.

Tip #2: Disable Unnecessary Services!

Windows XP comes with so many features and services that it's hard to know what to leave turned on and what to turn off. This totally depends on your level of familiarity and comfort with the OS. Power users will want to use more of these services than, let's say, our grandmother who just wants to get on the computer to use Microsoft Word and check some emails from the grandkids.

In no particular order, here are the Windows XP resource hogs to disable:

• Hibernation- This feature sounds good in theory, but only if you are using a laptop. I have had many people bemoan the fact that Hibernation just locked up their systems and took up quite a bit of space.

• Indexing Service- This is Windows XP's way of speeding up your searches on the hard drive. It's handy if you are running frequent searches using the Search function, but at the cost of a huge hit on your system resources.

• System Restore- This is a good feature to use if you tend to download a lot of stuff that could compromise the computer, or if you have children or teens that like to download a lot of stuff. If you tend to be the only one who uses it and are relatively careful, you will most likely never have to use this feature. It takes up a lot of room on your hard drive, so turn it off to get more of a performance boost.

• Remote Assistance and Remote Desktop- These two features almost never get used by Windows XP users. Turning these off has a dual benefit: increased performance and extra security that prevents people from accessing your computer remotely.

In Part 2 of this article, you will defragment your hard drive, download some broadband internet tweaks to speed up your connection, and learn how to fix your registry in case of any truly sticky situations.

Make these simple changes and watch XP spring to life!

Disabling Junk Programs at Start-Up

While on-site this morning, a customer asked: How can I keep this 'crap' from starting up every time I turn my computer on?!

My reply was: Follow the given steps to disable the windows auto run applications. To use this feature, you will need to be logged into your computer with administrative rights.

1. Click the Start button, click Run, and type msconfig in and press Enter.
2. A small System Configuration Utility dialog box will appear with many options like General, System.ini Win.ini, Boot.ini, Services, Startup and Tools.
3. Click on the Startup tab and uncheck the applications that you want to disable from your Windows startup.
4. Now click on Apply button to implement the changes, then click the OK button to end the configuration process.
5. Restart your computer so the changes you made will go into effect.

Voila! Doing this on your computer will give you the best gains in startup and system performance. Using this tip, you can minimize the startup time of Windows XP and Vista also.

Tweaking Windows XP

A customer asks: My new Dell computer is really slow. The other article on turning off programs (How to Disable Auto-Start Applications on Startup) helped a lot, but is there anything else I can do?My answer: YES! As a computer and network technician, I have visited many clients who wanted me to fix a certain issue..

read more | digg story

Is Your Data Safe From Your Computer Crashing?

Every week I get the call.

"My screen says [insert error here] and nothing will come up. Has my hard drive crashed?!"

My first response is "Did you backup your data?"

Hard drive crashes don't just happen to your teenager who downloads a virus. They don't just happen to the guy you saw in Starbucks that spilled his coffee on his laptop. They don't just happen to certain people that do certain things, they happen to everyone.

The word "Hard drive" sounds fancy and expensive, but they are really nothing more than a shiny disc with moving parts all around them. They have ball bearings inside, and can spin anywhere from 7,000RPM to 15,000RPM! (Just as a point of reference, even $650,000 Ferrari's only go to 10,500RPM!) Ball bearings can fail, dirt or dust can get inside the hard drive, or maybe you just got a "lemon" by a stroke of bad luck. Whatever the reason, most of the time it is NOT the user's fault that it crashed!

Sometimes your data can be recovered, sometimes it can not. Imagine starting from scratch on your computer, with nothing except what came with it the day you bought it. Scary thought, isn't it? The secret to avoiding this situation is to be proactive, not reactive.

You can't prevent your hard drive from crashing, but you can take steps to preserve your data before it happens. This can be done very in a very simple and affordable way to even the most novice home users. We've setup backups for hundreds of home and business users which can run automatically and as often as needed. We even offer remote monitoring for business critical backups.

The best backup strategy is to have a full image backup of your hard drive along with incremental backups. This way if you have a hard drive crash, you can restore the image backup and then each incremental backup in succession.

Don't Trash Vista Just Yet!

A reader asks: I just read your article about "Downgrading Vista to XP" but my Vista computer it still slow. Is there anything else I can do to speed it up?

My answer: Yes! There are 4 things every Vista user should know about how to fine tune their system. Vista comes with dozens of new features over XP and uses a TON of resources - memory and processing power - which is why it runs so much slower.

All new computers we sell with Vista are already tweaked, so you don't have to worry about this! If you're one of those poor souls that bought another brand computer and are unhappy with Vista, don't throw it out the window just yet! These 4 tips will have your computer screaming along in no time.

Here are the four steps to turn your Vista into XP:

Step #1 - Strip unused features with vLite.
vLite is a great program written to strip Vista of all the "bloatware" functionality that it comes packaged with. You can use it to create a much smaller OS (operating system) with only core functions. You can use it to remove unwanted features and drivers, reset the product keys, and tons of other tweaks. After generating the installer, it will then be transferred onto CDs or DVDs, and then you can install Vista faster with this new installer.

Step #2 - Disable Aero Theme.
You can easily disable the Aero Theme and use the classic interface like XP. You can decide on what level of similarity you want your Vista towards XP. For me, I would just keep the Aero theme without transparency support, then maybe changing the Windows menu to a 'classic start menu.'

Step #3 - Remove or Disable Advanced Features.
By removing advanced services like Superfetch, ReadbyBoost, Search Index, and/or Themes, you can free up more resources for your Windows. You may remove the services during the vLite installer creation, or retain them for future hardware upgrades. If you include them in the installer, you can still disable them later.

Step #4 - Optimize your Windows
There are many optimization tips around. If you want to save yourself some time, you should get the step by step "Unleash Vista Power Advance Guide". You can also use some free tweaking tools for Vista which should help you tweak Windows registry easier.

That concluded all steps. However, step #4 is a huge topic, you need some studies before performing any tuning, or you may need to re-install your Windows again! Remember to ALWAYS backup your Vista hard disk image before trying any tricks!

Broad Match Hell

One of the most confusing, frustrating, and costly aspects of pay-per-click advertising is the variety of keyword match types offered by the big three search engines.

What Google Adwords calls "broad match doesn't work exactly the same as MSN Adcenter's "broad match, and Yahoo doesn't have a broad match option at all.

As a result of this confusion, and because all three of the major players use their broadest possible matching system by default, many advertisers are losing money without even knowing about it.

Even if think you know what you're doing, it's still very easy to screw things up, especially with Adwords. That's because of the three major players, Google is the most aggressive about trying to get your keywords to match against "related searches.

In this article, I'll explain how the different matching options work at all of the major search engines, then give Adwords advertisers some concrete steps you can take to get control of the extreme situation at Google.

Matching Options: Who Does What

To help clarify the situation, I've compiled a table of the different matching options available at Google, MSN, and Yahoo.

Search Engine	Match Type	Description
	Exact Match	Will only match if the exact text is entered. A bid on [dog toys] would not be matched if the searcher types dog toy ?" singular and plural are not considered identical.
	Exact Match	99% equivalent to Google's exact match, with exceptions. Words with apostrophes are combined into 1 variation at Google. MSN ignores "extraneous words like a, an, the, etc.
	Standard Match	Similar to exact match, but Yahoo's Match Driver technology also includes singular, plural, common misspellings, and alternative spellings. Match Driver is used with all matching options, and you can't opt out.
	Phrase Match	Will match any query that includes the exact phrase. A phrase match for "dog toys would matchbig dog toys, but not toys for big dog.
	Phrase Match	Equivalent to Google's phrase match.
	...	Yahoo has no phrase match option. Seriously.
	Broad Match	Will match any search query that includes all of the words. MSN does not combine singular/plural consistently, but they do some light synonym matching.
	Advanced Match	Will match any search query that includes all of the words, plus singular, plural, spelling variations, and "synonyms.Dogmay be considered a synonym forpuppy, for example.
	Broad Match	Like Yahoo Advanced Match, but Google's "expanded broad match system also matches "related queries. Dog toy could be matched up withpet toys,pet giftsor anything Google thinks is related.
	Negative Match	Negative matches are keywords that you don't want to appear in the query. This allows you to avoid advertising onfree television setwhen you do phrase or broad matches for "television set, by setting a negative match for ?" free.
	Excluded Words	Similar to Google & MSN, but toy and toys are considered equivalent.
	Embedded Match	Most advertisers have never even heard of this one, but it's extremely powerful. It's a special type of negative match, where you can exclude exact or phrase matches.
	Automatic Match	Not an actual match type, but a feature Google rolled out this year, that extends their already aggressive expanded broad matching even further. Your ad for adidas tennis shoes could be triggered when someone searches forrunning shoes.

So, What's Wrong With Broad Matching?

If you've asked that question, you're ready to learn

The key to getting the best results out of your search advertising is how effectively your ad text, landing pages, and offer match a searcher's query. The less you know about what the searcher typed, the harder it is to deliver the right message and offer.

Advertising on queries where your ad doesn't make sense, or where your landing page and offer don't promise the searcher what they were looking for, is a waste of money.

Let's say you're selling dog toys. When someone searches for that exactly, you can show them an ad that's tested and tuned to get the best response, take them to a landing page that's tested and tuned to get the best response, and offer them your best (tested and tuned) selection of dog toys, to maximize your profitability.

If you aren't testing and tuning all of these things, that's a problem we'll tackle another day.

For now, let's assume that your dog toys ad, landing page, and offer are tested and tuned to get the maximum response from people who search fordog toys. Or if you aren't testing and tuning, at least designed to get the best response from that query.

Now, let's pretend that your dog toys ads are running on a broad match.

With MSN and Yahoo, you'll get a little bit of irrelevant traffic, at your expense of course. Searches fordog toy safetyorhow to get a dog to like new toywill trigger your ad. All those extra visitors are unlikely to convert into customers.

With Google, it gets even crazier. Your ad might trigger when someone searches forpet toy recallor other "related searches.

If you're running 100% broad match, chances are good that at least half of your traffic is irrelevant, useless, and unlikely to convert.

Even if you're not doing quite that badly, your click through rate (CTR) at Google will suffer, and you're paying more per click than you should, for worse ad positions.

In short, if you're using 100% broad match at Google, you're in Broad Match Hell whether you know it or not.

How To Escape From This Hell

There are a few simple steps you can take to improve the situation.

One option is kill broad matching entirely, at least in the short term. This is up to you, but if your campaigns aren't delivering good ROI, it's not a bad idea as a first step, while you're implementing my other recommendations.

Mona Elesseily of Page Zero Media reported last year that simply converting all broad matches in an Adwords campaign to exact matches delivered big improvements in click through rate, cost per click, cost per conversion, and an overall increase in profitability.

Your mileage may vary, but you'd be amazed at how often this simple action improves things. Fortunately, you can take a less radical step at first, to find out what's going on.

My recommendations:

1. Organize your campaigns into tightly focused ad groups.

Many advertisers combine a lot of loosely related keywords into one big ad group, and this is a terrible idea.

The more closely the text of your ad and landing page match the keyword you bid on, and the actual search queries, the better you will do. Keep your dog toys ads and keywords in one ad group, put the dog leash ads in another.

Many advertisers go so far as to have a "one keyword per ad group rule. To me, this is a little extreme, and difficult to manage, but it's better than dumping all of your keywords into one ad group.

2. Separate your ad groups into broad, phrase, and exact matches.

Like focusing your ad groups, this is definitely a best practice.

By separating your different match types into their own ad groups, you can start to see which match types are actually driving the most traffic, and which are actually driving the best ROI and conversion performance.

3. Find outexactlywhat people are searching for before they click.

Adwords provides a "Search Query Performance report. If you do nothing else, you should be looking at this report, to find out what negative matches you need to add to your broad & phrase ad groups.

If you're using Google Analytics, there are a few different solutions you can try, to collect exact keyword data. I previously blogged about the method I use: http://www.googlegeni.us/2009/10/extracting-exact-keywords-searched-from.html.  I also included a step-by-step video on how to do it.

4. Use negative matches with your phrase match and broad match ads.

If you're going to run anything other than exact matching, you need to use negative matches effectively. Assuming you've done step #3 above, you have a pretty good system for collecting new negative matches as your campaigns run.

Google also offers a pretty good research tool, within their Adwords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) to suggest possible negative matches just select Negative from the match type menu as shown:

While you're waiting for data to collect in Google Analytics, you can use Google's tool to find the most obvious negative matches.

Heaven Can Wait?

Some day, maybe the major PPC search engines will provide a more complete set of matching options. For now, use these suggestions to cut the fat out of your Adwords campaigns, and enjoy your newfound profits.

Weekend Update: How PPC differs on the weekend

At 5 p.m. on Friday, the weekend kicks off and everyone's mindset shifts. The important question is, "are you adjusting your marketing model during that period?" Many companies keep their same ads, budget and targeting during the Friday through Sunday period, even though their consumers are in a very different mindset. 

Just as you want to split test different ads and offers during the week, it's important to evaluate whether a different marketing model returns the best ROI during the weekend.

One initial aspect to consider is your core audience. If you're targeting business to business (B2B) offers, then decision makers are less likely to be making vendor decisions during this period. As a result, you may want to scale back your offerings or test a slightly different variant by relying upon lead generation rather than direct sales through your landing pages.

On the other hand, if you're a travel company, you may want to ramp up your offers for consumers who may have that itch for adventure. Depending on the nature of your business, consumer behavior during the weekend may be entirely different than during weekdays.

To start, you can review the conversion and traffic performance of your campaigns during the week relative to the weekend. You may find, for example, that Fridays perform well while your ROI drops on Sundays. With search engine marketing, you can adjust your bids or display time for ads during down periods, which can provide you with additional budget for times when your campaigns are performing optimally.

Video Marketing: Smart Tips to Use Videos to Improve Conversion Rates

Scrolling through dozens of potential service providers, a customer visits your site and views a refreshing video that introduces exactly what your company offers.  After reading countless paragraphs of sales copy, white papers and testimonials, customers are particularly receptive to multi-media messages that provide a succinct, user-friendly presentation that helps to separate your brand from your competition.

Strategic placement of well designed videos is an effective way of improving the conversion funnel on your site, as well as providing an outlet for syndicating your message to popular sites such as You Tube which frequently appear prominently in the natural search results.

Virtually Meet Your Customers

A major study from Sell Point (http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/video-product-tours-result-in-35-increase-in-online-sales-conversion-2491/) revealed that product tours can improve conversion rates by up to 35% relative to static web sites, even for major, well-known brands. (If you are having trouble with the link above, you can also view the attached PDF.) 

As a business professional, you understand the importance of personal contact and video provides an element of direct communication with your site visitors that images and text cannot offer. Proper visual demonstrations of your company create an immediate connection with the customer, establishing an element of trust that can improve conversion rates and encourage brand loyalty.

When designing videos for your site, it's best to bring your brand to life: showcase the people involved in your business and speak directly to the visitor by welcoming them to your site. Providing the right combination of information, friendly presentation and enthusiasm can encourage customers to do business with your company from the very first click.

Using Blogs to Create an Online Brand Personality

Growing businesses may find it challenging to continually provide on-going brand messaging regarding new products and services. Successful, fast moving companies often make adjustments on a daily basis to keep one step ahead of the competitive, and a well-written blog can breathe life into the direction that your company is headed. Blogs are the ultimate real-time brand messaging medium, allowing you to provide a comprehensive social media strategy utilizing your in-house blog, Twitter and Facebook to keep in touch with your loyal customers and potential clients.

Quality Content and Customer Communications

Traditionally, companies have relied upon occasional newsletters and events to make announcements to their customers.  Since every single industry is highly competitive today, it's important not only to stay ahead of your competition but to ensure that message is widely heard. Addressing customer requests and ideas on your blog is a great way to build a community - when customers feel linked to your brand; they are likely to remain loyal to your company as well as making recommendations to their friends.

Each element of your blog, from the design, type-face and the writing style is important. Blog posts not only allow you to target long-tail keywords in natural search, but also provide a written identity for your brand. If you're a consulting firm, establishing authority and a professional voice can help improve the reputation of your business, while a party planner may want to bring a tone of enthusiasm and excitement to each announcement. Crafting informative posts that your customers will want to read can help keep you in touch with your clients in an age of shifting loyalties.

Linking Analytics Goals with Adwords

One of the primary advantages of utilizing Google's advertising services is that you can track converion outcomes at a granular level. By integrating your Adwords account with your analytics profile, you'll be able to determine not only which keywords and campaigns converted but how effectively they performed overall. While conversion outcomes can be binary, the data on consumer interaction includes time spent on site, how many pages a visitor viewed, as well as insights into their navigation path.

Linking your Analytics Goals with Adwords can ensure that you understand the full breadth of conversion outcomes including purchases, subscriptions and leads.

To link you Analytics goals with conversion tracking in Adwords, you have to edit the Data Sharing settings in Google analytics. Once you've updated these settings, you can then update the Conversion Tracking Page to Link your Analytics goals. Make sure that your conversion goals are structured properly in analytics so you can see the full set of conversion options that you need to track. By linking your goals with your search marketing account, you'll be able to better understand how your campaigns are performing relative to your goals.

The insights provided by Google Analytics can help you structure future campaigns for improved performance, including better split-testing of campaigns according to different demographics and consumer segments. In business, data is power and utilizing Google Analytics goals to benchmark your search campaigns provides you with important insights into business outcomes.

Local Maps Optimization: Factors for Local Rankings

Today, many service-related services produce an automated map on Google which shows searchers the closest area providers. In addition to targeting natural search listings and pay per click ads, local maps listings can be an effective source of generating quality leads for your business.

To optimization methods for improving your local maps listing are similar to the factors that determine general search rankings, although there are several elements of your campaign which require unique optimization.

The factors included in your local maps ranking include whether you have claimed your local listing (through the Local Business Center), the number of local reviews for your service as well as the relevance of your service description (and company name) to the search in question. It can be difficult to precisely target exact search queries, although you can improve your chances of ranking well by updating your service listing, adding images and videos as well as encouraging your customers to place reviews through Google Maps, Citysearch and related local sites. Claiming and updating your local listing on these related sites can also help to improve the local relevance of your site.

One on-site aspect that you can update to improve local targeting is by adding your address and local phone number to your contact and About Us pages. Additionally, you can create pages on your site about the specific local offering that can improve the relevance of your site for local search phrases. Investing in local SEO can generate targeted, high quality leads for your small business.

Test Before You Build

Here's a simple tip that could easily save you 12 months of work:

Setting up an effective SEO campaign in a competitive market can be a long drawn out and expensive process. Worse yet, if you are focused on the wrong keywords, you might need to start over again after you find out that your site is not producing the results you want.

An easy way to avoid needing to start over is to test the value of keywords before you heavily commit to your SEO strategy. Buying pay-per-click ads (PPC) from search engines like Google (AdWords), Yahoo (Search Marketing), and Microsoft (adCenter) allow you to see what keywords have the ability to drive traffic to your site.

Learning The Hard Way

When I was new to the search game a client of mine told me that he wanted to rank for a list of fairly broad keywords. We were slowly moving up the search rankings, but he was not seeing much return. SEO is an investment game and it takes time and capital to build momentum. He had a rather low budget though, so it was taking months to see little response.

I could tell that things were not working out as well as either of us planned, and suggested we shift his budget over to AdWords to see what keywords are most valuable for his business. It turns out that the keywords he told me he wanted to rank for had very little value to his business. If I bid more than 15 cents a click for any of them we lost money. But there was a line of products he sold that had some related keywords which people converted on at a great rate. We could afford to pay $2 a click for some of these keywords and still make profit.

In late 2004 we adjusted his SEO strategy to match what worked well on the pay per click ads. When the economic downturn happened in 2008 and 2009 many competing businesses went out of business. Had we not used AdWords to test his keyword strategy his business would have likely went under as well. But he still ranks at the top of the search results because his SEO strategy was focused on what keywords worked well for his website.

Test a Variety of Keywords

Not every keyword you try will be profitable. But if you try a variety of keywords tightly related to your business you are far more likely to succeed than if you only bid on 1 keyword. Most businesses should test at least 5 to 10 different keywords, while retail oriented businesses should test a much larger set of keywords, driving traffic to the most relevant page whenever possible.


Track Conversions

All the major PPC ad networks have built in conversion tracking tools which show you what keywords and ad groups convert well. You can also pass the conversion value through to these tools to know exactly how much business came from each ad campaign and each keyword.



A point to note: the above slide from Google's internal study is actually from 2005.  As of June 2009, the percentage of people visiting a search engine first has skyrocketd to 82%. In the above groups I also used obtuse campaign names to prevent you from knowing what site this data is associated with, but note that

• the highest volume keywords (listed as "core") were associated with most of the transactions, but they also had relatively high conversion costs (since they were the most obvious keywords to target)
• the keywords that we bid much less on (listed as "cheap") still were not very "cheap" once you factor in the cost per conversion (the traffic was available at a discount rate only because the keywords were worth less)
• the longtail keywords (listed as "individual") did not create a ton of sales volume, but they were cheaper clicks and they tended to have a fairly high conversion rate when compared against the core industry keywords (using a keyword list generator like the above and mapping keywords out against URLs helps pick up a lot of this under-priced traffic)
• the ad group with ad copy catering toward big spenders (listed as "custom quote") on the surface looks more expensive per conversion, but...
• the average order size of these customers (not shown) was much larger than the average order size of other customers, yielding far greater profit per conversion
• some additional orders were taken over the phone (so the cost is even less than what was shown)

If tracking conversions is hard, you can place a link to a coupon (or some other free offer) on your landing page and view a click on that coupon page as a proxy for conversion and user intent. Some more sophisticated strategies involve setting up different 1(800) phone numbers based on the marketing channel or keyword.

Where to Start Testing With Pay Per Click Ads

For most businesses the best way to start pay per click advertising is to test your ideas on Google AdWords and then carry the best results over to Yahoo! and Microsoft.  There are a lot of smaller ad networks that sell traffic as well, but most of them have low traffic quality, so they don't help you save money and they do not offer representative market feedback. For most advertisers the smaller ad networks are a complete waste of time.

Profiting from the Content Network

While you may have mastered the art of search targeting directly through the engines, building a targeting content network campaign can be an additional source of profit.  By placing ads on 3^rdparty sites you'll potentially reach an entirely new audience, allowing you to target potential customers that are browsing related sites. While the targeting methods on the content network are not quite a precise as exact search keyword targeting, you can find high value on-site placements that generate an impressive return on your marketing spend.

There are two main types of content network targeting: you can either select to place your ads on a chosen set of sites or let Google automatically match you to relevant sites based upon the keywords within your ad-group. Your ads can either be standard text ads or banner ads that meet the network's requirements (some animated ads and certain types of promotions may not be allowed). In general, bidding is done on either a standard CPC or CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) basis, so you'll want to determine what your optimal campaign structure is.

Just as you can with the search network, it's possible to track conversions and ROI on content network campaigns. Within the content network reports, you can determine which placements are most profitable and can prioritize those settings, just as you would for keyword-level bids in the search network.  Over time, you can place ads on priority sites and opt-out of low performing sites, providing you with a steady stream of targeted traffic from relevant 3^rdparty network sites.

How Negatives Can Be a Positive for your Conversion Rate

You've setup your search engine campaign and are ready to target your "oil change" services to a variety of consumer in your area. After adjusting the campaign settings for the proper geographic area, setting your keyword bids properly and performing plenty of keyword research, you think you're ready to go.

A few weeks later, you may be disappointed with the conversion rate of your clicks to new service appointments. An important, but often overlooked, factor for search engine marketing is the important of adding negative keywords to limit the types of search queries you ads display on.

Negative keywords are simply terms that prevent your ads from showing on certain terms. The phrase match keyword "oil change", for example" could match to searches such as "oil change diy" or "free dealer oil change" which likely won't result in sales. By adding negative keywords such as "diy" and "free" you can ensure that your ads won't display on these terms.

Going even further, you can run ads on the exact match [oil change] to ensure complete matching of the exact search query without the need to add additional phrase specifications.  A regular element of keyword research should involve reviewing your search queries for potential negative keywords.

You can review your search queries through the Reports interface within Adwords, which can show you the types of phrases your ads are generating clicks for. Analytics packages can provide further insight into these queries based upon the amount of time spend on the site (as well as the "bounce rate" for users who don't navigate beyond the first page.) Adding negative keywords on a regular basis can reduce your "bad" spend, allowing you to allocate search spend into the most effective areas.

Going Fishing: How to Generate Natural Links

To rank highly in organic search results, it's important to earn high quality links relevant to your industry. Like everything worthwhile in life, you cannot create a long-term strategy based upon buying links to your site - instead, you'll want to cultivate relationships with business partners, credible bloggers and publishers as well as other media outlets in your industry to generate links.

While there are short-term strategies that can generate SEO links to your site, the most effective, high value links are generated through building a credible, high quality brand.

By following the golden rule, you should always start any link building campaign by ensuring that your site is high quality. From the content to design of your website, each element should convey a message of authority along with your corporate ethos. If you're a vacation travel company, the look, feel and text of your site should be whimsical and fun, while also providing important information. When you have a site that conveys the proper message, you'll be able to more easily build high value relationships with other site owners.

Always think about building relationships and adding value to your link partners, rather than just emailing to ask for a link exchange. You might want to offer to write a guest article or post for an industry site, or join some authority industry trade groups that offer links. In general, the value of a link is proportional to the difficulty to obtain it - always focus on building quality links that will add long run value to your search rankings within your industry.

Direct Me: High Value Local Directories

One reliable way to generate high quality inbound links and increase your web presence is to submit your site to high quality directories. These sites generally provide consumers with a way to connect with an electronic version on the yellow pages, and have become a reliable alternative to out-dated print methods. Manual submission to these directories can enable you to promote your site, phone number and business services to targeted local consumers at no additional cost.

There are dozens of local sites which aggregate consumer reviews for local decision making. One of the fastest growing offerings is Yelp, which is a Web 2.0 version of Citysearch that allows consumers to connect with reliable reviews. You can "claim" or add your local business listing on these sites, which allows you to receive notifications of consumer reviews, add special offers or update business information as it changes (including new products and service offerings.)  It's important to claim these listings to keep accurate tabs on your company in the eyes of consumers, as well as ensuring that you get proper links back to your website for SEO purposes.

General web directories are also a good source of potential links and visibility for your company. High quality directories include Business.com, Yahoo and Best of the Web, although they each have their own requirements and submission fees for entry. Dedicating part of your promotional budget to submission to relevant niche directories can also be an effect way to generate quality inbound links to increase your search rankings.

Viewing split tests in Google Analytics

Everyone remembers the famous Monty Hall game where guests had to pick between doors A, B and C. Based upon the door selected, you'd be able to switch or stick with the existing door. With the help of Google analytics split testing your website is less about guessing and more about tracking which variants are closest to reaching your given benchmarks.

Making small changes in your website can result in important improvements in conversion rates, consumer retention and mindshare for your visitors. One effective way to begin split testing is to implement free tools from Google including Website Optimizer linked to your Google Analytics account.

To begin, you'll want to determine whether you are primarily interested in running a simple A/B split test or a multivariate test with multiple changing elements. Once you have setup the different versions of the page (or multiple graphics and layouts), you'll need to setup conversion goals and tagging for the outcomes you are measuring. For example, if you want to test whether a given landing page results in more newsletter subscriptions, it's important to setup the goal within your analytics profile before beginning the testing process.

Once you have properly tagged the site, you can use the Google Website Optimizer. The automated setup process allows you to determine which elements will be tested - the Optimizer will show you a preview of the different versions to ensure it matches your expectations. Once you have setup the tests, you can view the results in both Analytics and Website optimizer, so you can gain better insights into the process.

How to Optimize Your Presence in Google Maps

Take a moment and search for a local service in your local area. Chances are that a map will immediately pop-up showing nearby service providers, as well as links to reviews, driving directions and more information on each company. 

Studies have shown that local searches are one of the fastest growing segments of queries (http://www.clickz.com/3626608) and that a majority of local business research is conducted online. 

If you have trouble with the link above, you can also view the attached PDF.

For those reasons, it's crucially important that you optimize your local business profile to generate high, relevant local rankings for your services.

Optimizing Your Business Profile

All of the major search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo) feature their own unique local maps engines which provide information on local business offerings, reviews as well as media such as pictures and videos. By default, many of the listings pull data from around the web and may leave off crucial elements of your business. Claiming the profiles within each search engine gives you the ability to write a detailed description, add coupons for special offers and integrate video into your listings.

These additional elements are a core part of determining how highly your firm ranks when consumers search for your local service. Ensuring the accuracy of the information on the listing, such as updated addresses and phone numbers, can also ensure that you're getting as many possible leads through local search.  As the momentum from local search continues, you can stay ahead of the curve by integrating the latest features into your local listing, further helping you separate from the competition.

Season's Greetings: Holiday SEO Tips

The holiday season is one of the biggest revenue periods for many small businesses, and ramping up your search campaigns for holiday sales can help make your 4^thquarter results even more impressive. There are multiple factors of consumer sentiment which change as you approach the end of the year: consumers become more oriented toward meeting their New Year financial and health goals, while also investing in gifts for their loved ones. As a result, nearly every industry can benefit by creating end of year specific Holiday campaigns designed to meet consumer needs.

To start, you'll want to evaluate the specific types of offers that you'll introduce at year end. If you're offering holiday gift packages or gift certificates, it's important to implement content pages targeting these specific offers. Building high quality content and design pages, however, is just a start: you'll want to make sure that you build links to these new pages. One way to generate inbound links for the holiday seasons is to co-create a promotion along with a local media site, magazine or blogger - this will ensure you get quality links and promotion at the same time. While targeting your local audience is important, it's also crucial that you offer is designed to retain consumers after the holiday season.

The nature of the content should be keyword-rich but also well balanced to appeal to consumers. Make sure that you have optimized meta titles, descriptions and URLs so that you can properly target your keywords. Getting your pages indexed quickly is important for time-sensitive campaigns, so make sure you submit an updated sitemap and generate links to the pages in a timely fashion.

Using Meta Tags to Optimize Your Site for Search

One of the most effective site updates you can make to your site is to optimize unique meta tags for each page. Just as you might spend time identifying the most effective headline and description for your Adwords text-ads, choosing the right meta-title and description can improve your organic search click-through and conversion rate. In the example below, computer company Dell has optimized their meta title to focus on the variety of products the company offers, while providing a meta-description that targets each particular customer segment:

Providing a summary of your core brand messaging

Your choice of meta-tags plays an important role not only in determining your positioning in the search results, but also in establishing a message for your brand. The example above is designed to target the breadth of the company's offerings, as well as the nature of their product and service solutions for all technology users. Pay close attention to the keywords and overall flow of your meta-tags so that you convey a clear message of what your company stands for.

As a startup company, Mint.com had to brand itself as a free personal finance organizer. Through effectively targeting keywords such as "personal finance software" and "budget planning", the company crafted an identity for their online brand for new and existing customers. Whether you have a well known brand that you're looking to expand or need to craft a unique online identity, meta-tags are one of the most important sources to target relevant searches.

50 Milliseconds to Disaster

According to a 3-year-old study that I just saw, the average length of time it takes someone to decide a web page sucks is about 50 milliseconds.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4616700.stm

To put this amount of time in perspective, this is 3-4 times faster than your fastest muscle reflex.

The most important elements of a landing page, to avoid the 50 millisecond puke, are header and page design.

The implications go far beyond the first 50 milliseconds. From the article:

If people believe a website looks good, then this positive quality will spread to other areas, such as the website's content.

Since people like to be right, they will continue to use the website that made a good first impression, as this will further confirm that their initial decision was a good one.

Is your website making a good first impression?

Check Landing Page Performance by Browser

Every browser is different.* Ask any web designer about their craft and you'll eventually get them talking passionately about these differences. How Internet Explorer 6 renders CSS pseudo-elements (badly) and handles padding and spaces (randomly). How IE7 ignores CSS drop shadows. How floating divs never seem to work the same way in any of the browsers. These peculiarities have driven many a developer to strong drink.

When it comes to testing new webpage designs in Google Website Optimizer, speed can be essential. You want to get the experiment out the door as soon as possible so you can get preliminary data. Sometimes this means that things slip through QA. Browser testing is exceptionally finicky and time consuming. Not every office has a spare Mac sitting around, and with three different versions of Internet Explorer still in wide use-and no easy way to install all three versions on a single PC-it's no small feat to make your page variations all work perfectly in every popular browser.

With just a few Google Analytics Advanced Segments in your arsenal, however, you'll be able to see whether or not your new pages are functioning fine in all the right browsers. Hit the jump for details.

First, you'll need to create a new Advanced Segment for each landing page in your experiment. Check out Segment 1 and Segment 2 for more detail.

Next, apply both segments to your reports and head to the Browsers reports. This report defaults to the pie chart, but I like to switch back to the data table:

Now check out each browser and pay attention to the Bounce Rate column for each Landing Page segment. If one particular browser has a Bounce Rate that seems particularly out of whack, drill down and check out the versions. Then, using your findings, test the page live (if you can) or use a site like Browsershots.

Keyword domains to enhance rankings

In competitive industries, gaining every possible advantage over your competition is important. One key resource you can utilize in order to begin raking for high value terms (especially on the local level), is to invest in domain names based upon your keywords.

For example, if you're a dentist in Austin, Texas, then you may want to buy the domain name AustinDentist.com - in many cases, you'll have to purchase the domain from the existing owner (since most high quality local keywords are registered), but proper implementation on a keyword-rich domain name can pay great dividends over time relative to traditional traffic sources such as pay per click.

To begin your domain search, identify the terms that customers use to connect to your service. Using the example above, the domains AustinWhitening.com, AustinToothRepair.com, etc. can be high value opportunities. In many cases, you can also look at the .net and .org extension alternatives, which may be available at a much lower cost (especially if they are not yet registered.)

In general, you'll want to stick with com, net or org extensions for your keyword domains. Once you come up with a list of possible domains, check if they're open for registration from a leading domain company such as GoDaddy and register the available domains as soon as possible.

Once you've secured keyword-rich domains, you'll want to begin developing them with high quality, original content related to the keyword. Use the domains to generate traffic, leads as well as links to your main business site. A properly structured network of domains can result in great returns over time.