We’re looking for a motivated, creative and analytic thinker with excellent communication and leadership skills to join the Traffic and Search Strategy team in our Wilmington, North Carolina office.​

As a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Specialist, your responsibilities will be to design, development and implement PPC campaigns on major search engines including Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc.​ as well as work to develop and implement strategies to increase natural / organic search engine traffic from key search engines to the network of Sage Island web sites.​

The SEM Specialist will also work with Account Executives, Graphic Designers, Programmers, and other team members to drive SEM and SEO success and will be charged with establishing best practices on optimization of a variety of different PPC campaigns for a variety of unique customers.​ Additionally, you will be responsible for developing and implementing keyword strategies, including working with business owners to understand their specific PPC and SEO needs and developing strategies, plans, and campaigns accordingly.​

The SEM Specialist will also work with developers to evolve in-house SEM tracking and reporting tools and keep current on SEM developments within the industry.​

Responsibilities

• Create, manage and optimize PPC campaigns in support of business goals for Sage Island customers.
• Continuously review and optimize PPC campaigns, including thorough analysis of profitability of campaigns, keyword lists, landing page quality, downstream feedback of lead and traffic quality, etc.
• Serve as internal search expert to ensure best practices are shared and leveraged by all groups.
• Continuously improve tracking, reporting and profitability of the SEM and SEO efforts.
• Analyze and translate quantitative and qualitative data from web analytics tool intoactionable SEM and SEO plans
• Research and develop SEM and SEO best practices to identify new market opportunities and maximize program profits with improved paid campaign performance and organic rankings
• SEMrecommendations should be very detailed and include analysis of current keywords, ad groups, and landing pages and other PPC issues
• SEO recommendations should be very detailed and include specifications for improving indexing, link popularity, on page optimization and other SEO issues
• Select and refine SEO/​SEM keyword lists
• Through research and analysis of key metrics help identify new projects to expand visibility in search engines

Skills

• Knowledge and experience with the creation, management, and optimization of large-scale PPC campaigns
• Knowledge of optimizing websites for major search engines
• Experience with Web content management tools
• Experience with PPC campaign management and optimization tools
• Understanding of search engine rankings algorithms and how search engine spiders work
• A quantitative approach to traffic measurement and experience with collecting and interpreting site visitor statistics
• Knowledge/​skills in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS are a plus
• Experience using Microsoft Office programs (Excel, Word, etc.​)
• Must be detail-oriented with excellent analytical and problem-solving skills
• Strong written and verbal communication skills to evangelize Traffic/​Search Strategy projects and work with cross functional staffs to ensure implementation
• Ability to work individually on a project or in a team environment
• Self-starter approach to work, with an eagerness to consistently meet and exceed objectives and take on more responsibility.

Qualifications/​Requirements

• 1 – 3 years experience as a Search Engine Marketer
• Bachelors degree or equivalent training and experience

Full-time with benefits package. Send us a cover letter and resume. Specify Marketing Specialist in subject line to jobs@sageisland.com.

North Carolina based company, Combat Medical Systems, came to Sage Island with the goal of redesigning and redeveloping an ecommerce website that displays their products and information. Founded in 2008, Combat Medical Systems develops innovative products to simplify tactical medicine. As can be seen in the website, Combat Medical Systems offers a number of highly configured medical kits and products for users of all medical skills. This new and improved website was built within a Content Management System, featuring a Flash Header, News module, WordPress Blog and a manageable shopping cart. Currently the shopping cart is set to handle orders by phone only, in the future it will be set to receive orders and automatically process the Credit Card.

Extending beyond the website, Sage Island and Combat Medical Systems’ professional relationship continues as we are continually working on the design and development for a new company brochure, magazine ads promoting specific products, product sheets, product photography, tradeshow banner stands, a secondary non-profit website and Pay Per Click campaigns.

Extensive keyword research is the first step to any search marketing campaign. Keyword research is the framework on which your entire campaign is built, whether you’re using search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, or both. If you don’t get your keywords right, your efforts will be wasted.

If you’ve started on the wrong foot, there’s still time. Good keyword research is an evolution. The world of search is constantly changing, and your keywords should, too. The terms that people are using today may not be the most successful six months from now.

Whether you’re putting together your first keyword list or adapting your current list, here are some tips to get you started.

Don’t use the same keyword list for your SEO and PPC campaigns.

SEO and PPC are complete different, and they require different keyword lists. In fact, most of the keywords you use for SEO probably won’t even end up on your PPC list. PPC keyword lists are highly targeted — you’re looking for keywords that will target a very specific audience to ensure you’re not spending money on clicks from tire-kickers. For SEO, your keywords should be relevant, but much broader to reach a larger search audience.

Never build a keyword list based on assumptions.

No matter how well you know your target audience, the truth is that as a business owner you think differently than your consumers. Many marketers and business owners create keyword lists based on their knowledge of the business instead of search volume. They’re surprised to discover that consumers are searching for a completely different list of terms. Your technical knowledge may be preventing you from finding the laymen’s terms for which your customers are searching. While a good knowledge of the terminology in your business is a great place to start your research, you need metrics to back you up. Use a keyword research program like Keyword Discovery or WordTracker, Google AdWords’ Keyword Tool to ensure that the keywords are the right ones.

Break long keyword phrases into pieces.

For SEO, try breaking your keyword phrases into smaller pieces to maximize your reach. For example, while “new houses for sale” may have a decent search volume, you might have better results with something like “new home listings,” because it works as a stand-alone keyword phrase, two separate shorter phrases (new home and home listings), and home has a higher search volume than houses. Create power phrases by ensuring that each and every word in your keyword phrase packs a punch.

Choose your keywords wisely.

Once you’ve built a long list of potential keywords, it’s decision time. For PPC, you can test a long list of keywords to find the most successful. For SEO, you need to be a little more selective. The most successful optimizations use a very short list of keywords — no more than 3 for each page. Don’t just choose the keywords with the highest search volume. Look deeper to create longer keyword phrases that will garner search volume without being too competitive. Find a balance between search volume, competition, and relevance.

Constantly update your keywords based on analytics, conversions, and traffic.

Good keyword research can create a pretty powerful initial list, but you’re not finished. You need to make constant adjustments. With PPC, the changes will most likely be daily, especially in the beginning. Watch your click-through rates and conversions to ensure that your keywords are driving relevant traffic without costing too much, and keep an eye on your analytics to find negative keywords.

SEO is a long-term process, so you’ll want to give your site some time to collect data before making changes. Monitor your analytics constantly to determine which keywords are driving the most traffic to your site. If you’re not getting the results you wanted after a month or two, it may be time to make some changes, shift your focus, or find new keywords.

There is a ton of useful information in your main AdWords campaign summary pages, especially now that they’ve released the new interface (still in beta).  However, on these pages and even in Analytics, you don’t get to see the whole story. To most accurately target the keywords, ads & budgets of my AdWords accounts, there are several reports that I rely on which fill in the gaps that are missing from the main performance data.

Search Query Performance Report

Most likely, your ad groups are composed of keywords set to broad, phrase, and exact match (and if not, they should be). With broad match keywords, your ad is triggered when a user searches on a term that Google determines to be similar to your keyword. The Search Query Report lists the exact search queries which triggered your ads and resulted in clicks.

By looking at the report, you can determine new keywords, or even ad groups, which you hadn’t originally included by seeing which terms are receiving the most clicks and/or conversions. I’ve also found the Search Query Report to be extremely useful in determining negative keywords for my campaigns, especially with short-tail terms. The report identifies variations that don’t match the original intent of my keywords.

Account/Campaign/Ad Group/Keyword Performance

Depending on how specific you are looking to get, you might use these reports to see an overall view of your data for any amount of time.  However, I’ve found the best thing about these reports to be their customizability, from a unit of time, to a date range, to specifically what type of data I am looking to see (CTR, conversions, etc.).

I have often used these reports to show the historical success of my campaigns over each day of the week. By selecting “day of week” from the drop down menu and choosing a relatively large amount of time, I can often determine the best days to focus our clients’ PPC budgets, which can be extremely beneficial, especially for smaller ad budgets. A similar report can be used to determine peak hours of the day (choose hourly from the drop down menu). By taking advantage of AdWords’ ad scheduling feature, you can focus your budget only during the hours of the day in which you receive the heaviest number of clicks.

Geographic Report

Whether you are a large nationwide operation or a small local company, geotargeting is an important tool. The Geographic Report is an excellent way to determine areas in which you have the most success (or the least). The report can be customized to show as broad of an area as entire countries, or as narrow as a single city.

If you find that your ads are especially successful in a certain area, it might be worthwhile for you to allocate a certain amount of your budget to specifically target that region (just make sure to exclude that area from any other campaigns which might overlap those targeted regions). You may also find areas where your ads are far less successful. In that case, it may be wise to exclude these areas in an effort to focus your ad dollar on those regions which are most likely to convert.

These are just a few of my favorites. There are plenty of other reports in AdWords that are also highly beneficial, and I encourage you to dig around and explore this often underused feature.  No matter your PPC advertising budget, each of these can help you to allocate your budget in the most efficient, targeted way.

Creating and implementing a Google AdWords account isn’t especially difficult. You choose your keywords, write your ads, determine a budget, and voila!  You’re up and running.  However, in order to achieve success with your PPC campaign, there is a certain amount of strategy that you need to consider, especially when it comes to your keywords.

Keyword matching options basics

Google offers four different keyword matching options: broad, phrase, exact and negative.

• Broad match keywords allow your ad to show on variations of the keyword (i.e. synonyms) as well as similar phrases.  For example, if you chose a broad match keyword “phone,” your ad might be triggered by “cell phone,” “home phone service,” “headphone,” etc.
• Phrase match keywords, notated by putting quotation marks around the word, allow your ad to show on variations of your keyword phrase.  For example, if you chose a phrase match keyword “cell phone,” your ad might be triggered by “cell phone providers,” “used cell phone,” etc. New words may be added before or after your phrase, but the phrase must be intact in the correct order to trigger your ads.
• Exact match keywords, notated by brackets around the keyword, allow your ad to show only when the exact phrase is used in a search query with no words ahead or behind the keyword phrase.  In our “cell phone” example, your ad would show only when a user types the exact phrase “cell phone.”
• Negative match keywords, notated by a negative sign before the keyword, are used to ensure that ads do not show for a particular search term.  For example, if you are selling only new cell phones, you might include the term “used” as a negative keyword.

Why is this important?

The main (and most important) goal of PPC advertising is to drive targeted, highly relevant traffic to your website, which in turn will drive sales and leads, as well as serve as a powerful branding tool for your business.  However, if you are running only broad match keywords, you are most likely getting traffic from users who are not looking for the exact product or service you are providing.  At the same time, you don’t want to only use phrase and exact match, because you don’t want to miss out on the additional traffic that broad match keywords can provide.

What to do?

At the start of your campaign, choose 20-25 highly relevant and closely related keywords.  Include each of these keywords as broad, phrase, and exact match.  Give your campaign some time to run and gather data for you.  Monitor your data, and after about a month, run a Search Query Report (found in the Reports tab in your AdWords account).  This report will show you the exact search queries that triggered your ads, which ones received the best CTRs, and which ones are leading to the most conversions.  Because it shows you the exact search queries used, you can also identify any words that should be included as negative keywords.

After your campaign has had enough time to run (1-3 peak business months), delete the keywords that aren’t getting you a solid CTR or conversion rate.  You can also use your top performing keywords to expand your list using words that are close variations of your best ones.

Although it may seem overwhelming at the start to have such long keyword lists, it will pay off in the end, and you will be sure to have the most relevant, targeted traffic coming to your site.

There is no doubt that today’s economy is affecting all businesses. Whether you are a corporate CEO or a small business owner, you are looking for those extra expenses that all add up to big spending.  Before you reach for your scissors to cut out pay per click advertising, let’s take a moment and refine your PPC strategy . We just may find opportunity.

Google recently published six AdWords tactics for tough times. While you may find that not all of these apply directly to your business, there is great value in the idea of adapting your PPC to the current situation.

• Focus your ad text and keywords on low prices and savings. Use words like “sale,” “discount,” and “value.”
• Make sure your ad groups are targeted and relevant. Your keywords and ads in each ad group should focus on a specific product or topic.
• Use negative keywords to filter out traffic that’s not related to what you offer.
• Make it easy for customers to buy. Your destination URL should take customers to the most relevant page according to the query on which they searched.
• Focus your money on the keywords, ads, and ad groups that are driving the most business.  Consider pausing any “branding” campaigns in favor of “selling” campaigns.