June 25 & 26, 2008 – Crowne Plaza Galleria – Addison, TX

Day 1 – Wednesday, June 25, 2008 – Strategies for Maximizing ROI

• 9-10am: Introduction & The “Fast Start” Planning Process

Presenting a simple process for planning, measuring, & improving your ROI from search. This planning process puts a “wrapper” around the rest of your search marketing activity, from SEO to PPC to copywriting & testing.

• 10-11am: Understand Your Brand & Using It Profitably

A different way of looking at branding, that takes the often-mushy topic to a concrete level. Student case studies demonstrate the results that come from understanding your brand & integrating brand messaging into your search marketing.

• (break)

• 11:30am-1pm: Keyword Strategy Clinic

The “Keyword Strategy” chapter of SEO Fast Start is 12 pages long… in this clinic, the “Keyword Guru” explains how to lay your competitor’s keyword strategy bare, understand the real intent behind search queries, and find the hidden profits.

• (lunch)

• 2-3:30pm: Content Development & Copywriting

Do big sites always win? Is content really King? In this session, we’ll explore the balance between SEO, PPC, content creation, and copywriting. Content isn’t just there to get you on SERPs, it must inform, engage, and persuade your visitors to take action.

• (break)

• 4-5pm: Open Q&A

Day 2 – Thursday, June 26, 2008 – The “Missing Training”

• 9-11am: Link Building for Fun, Profit, & Link Juice

Exploring, via case studies, how link building strategies can be profitable on their own, how to get beyond “link bait” to create willful linking, and how to evaluate and channel the link juice you create.

• (break)

• 11:30am-1pm: Adwords – What They Forgot To Tell You

Battle-tested strategy & tactics to attack the “big head,” the long tail, and everything in between. Lead generation strategies, campaign organization to maximize profits. Day parting, day-of-week effects, and geo targeting techniques that any advertiser can use.
(lunch)

• 2-3:30pm: Social Media Strategies "Outside the Box"

Developing a blogging strategy, leveraging social networks to create ‘instant community,’ content sharing & syndication strategies for traffic, links, and reputation management.

• (break)

• 4-5pm: Open Q&A

Thanks to everyone for your patience - the "early bird" price of $97/seat will be extended through this Wednesday (June 4), but then I have to pull it down and lock in our room block. From Thursday on, for any remaining seats, the price will be $297/seat. (Update: the price has now gone up.)

Click here to register now at $297 per seat!

(You will be returned to this site after completing registration).

Agenda is subject to change & tweaks. I'll have some announcements in the next week or so, as speakers confirm.

Update: Working on closing the deal with Dr. Ben Mack and Jerry West today… Ben is a magician, Ben is Branding, Ben is worth a trip to Addison, Texas.

For those who have already registered, hotel discount info should be on its way today via email.

Or you may prefer SEMPO's definition:

Dayparting – The ability to specify different times of day – or day of week – for ad displays, as a way to target searchers more specifically. An option that limits serves of specified ads based on day and time factors.

No matter how you define it, a lot of advertisers are left wondering how it works, and whether they should do it… Over the years, I've seen many speakers, writers, and educators talk about pay-per-click advertising. I've done training on this myself, of course.

When it comes time to talk about day-parting, we all seem to get a little scared that someone will misunderstand, so the explanation of dayparting rarely seems to get beyond the definitions offered above.

While it's true that a complete understanding of dayparting would require a lot of discussion, it's equally true that there are some very simple things an advertiser can begin to do, in order to understand how "time of day" affects their profitability.

Getting Some Numbers

What you really want is your revenue per visit and cost per click, hour by hour, for each ad group, keyword, and campaign… but guess what? That's kind of hard to get. If you use Google Analytics, you can't get 'hourly' reports for keywords… so, what to do?

Although you can't get hourly reports at the level of detail you want, you can get an overall sense of how well the incoming traffic on your site performs at different hours of the day.

In the ECommerce section of Google Analytics, you want to look at two reports:

• First, the Conversion Rate report - click the link for hourly data, and export that report.
• Second, Average Order Value - do the same - hourly report, export the data. If you collect leads, just assign a value.

The next steps are 5th grade math:

• Your average order value times your conversion rate = your revenue per visitor
• Mulitply your profit % by your value per visitor = your breakeven click cost

The table below, from Microsoft Excel, shows this calculation for a friend's site:

They are at breakeven between around 8am and midnight, and most profitable during the hours of 10am-8pm (shown in green).

Not Science, But Maybe Better Than Nothing

While this method isn't as scientific (or accurate) as analyzing your keyword campaigns' traffic directly, it does have the advantage of being easy to do. For a campaign that is losing money, or barely profitable, eliminating click costs during off hours can make a huge difference. Maybe even enough difference to get some better-than-free analytics software up and running.

That's it for today… we'll talk more soon.

(PS - Stompernet is open today for a few hours to fill up the last few spots. If you missed it last week, today is your last opportunity.)

Hype in the marketplace… affiliates running wild… but what's it really about?

Today, you're going to get a chance to join a coaching and training program that my colleagues and I have spent 18 months building. That program is called Stompernet… and if you think you know what it is, you're probably wrong.

This is personal for me:

• I am a full time faculty member responsible for developing our search marketing curriculum.
• I am a principal player in the development of Stompernet over the past 18 months.
• I get to work with a team of more than a dozen other brilliant faculty members from a variety of fields.
• I get to work 1 on 1 with Stompernet members through our forums, live events, and my faculty office hours.
• I get a chance to impact the lives of a lot of small business owners by helping them grow their business.
• Plus, they gave me a cool hat and named me "Dean of Faculty," so I make sure everyone else's training is top notch. (It is.)

Naturally, I want as many "SEO Fast Start" readers to join me as possible, but I know that even if you decide to join today, you're probably not going to join through the link I'm about to give you.

That's because it's not an affiliate link. I'm not going to earn a commission if you join through that link… and a lot of our affiliate partners (like Ed Dale, Frank Kern, Eben Pagan, and Rich Schefren) are going to be offering some really great spiffs if you sign up with them.

The only "bonus" I can offer you is a little bit more of my time. If you join with me, through my link, you'll get an extra group coaching call with me each month for your first 3 months in Stompernet. I'm not doing it for a commission - I'm doing it because I want you to succeed and get the most out of the program. After 18 months of working on the inside, with more than a thousand members, I think I've got a pretty good perspective on how to do that.

But if that's not exciting for you, I understand. I can't afford to ship you a giant box of DVDs. I can't let you into my "Super Platinum Xenon Insider Secret Mastermind Circle" because I don't have one. So, if you get a "better offer," don't feel bad about taking it, but do let me know that you've joined.

What Stompernet Is and Isn't:

A lot of people have the idea that Stompernet is some kind of a "business opportunity," or SEO training program, or get-rich-quick scheme. It's not - although we do have some really excellent SEO training inside.

Stompernet is, and always has been, a coaching and training program for business owners. The purpose of this program is to teach people how to run their business, offering as much specialized training as necessary on-demand, so that our members' businesses will grow and they will prosper.

Comparisons to familiar programs are bound to fail because there is simply nothing like it, anywhere.

The SEO training we offer is darned good, the best in my opinion, but that's only a small part of it.  My Adwords course is a part of it. Andy Edmonds' analytics training is part of it.

But naming a few of the training programs gives short shrift to what we've actually built for you in the past year and a half.

We have a team of 15 (!) world class experts as faculty members, developing content and supporting our members through 4-times-per-week "faculty office hours" coaching calls.

Those calls are really cool - we get to answer individual questions, speaking one on one with a student, and it's incredible how much ground we can cover by doing it that way.

Faculty office hours are cool - but so are the forums

But you hardly need to get the faculty members on the phone, because they're in our forums, along with a couple dozen paid expert moderators, and fellow business owners who have usually "been there and done that" before you showed up.

There are over 100,000 posts in those forums, and I've made 3,158 of them. So, when I say that Stompernet is the place to be if you want me to help you grow your business, I'm not kidding - that's where I am.

Sometimes you need more than a quick answer from the forums, which is when you'll probably head over to our media library, and watch one of hundreds of training videos on topics from Adwords to Analytics to Blogging to Conversion to Email Marketing to Outsourcing to SEO to Usability to Zoology.

OK, we don't have anything on Zoology, I just wanted to say something that started with a Z.

Stompernet isn't for everyone.

That's not because you need a bunch of technical knowledge, we've got you covered on that part.

If you're an SEO consultant and you just want to absorb the "latest and greatest," you're not going to enjoy Stompernet after the first month or two. If you want to learn how to grow your consulting business, or about a million other ways you could help your clients grow, I think you'll love it.

If you are a business owner and you want to grow, if you're willing to apply the lessons, and you can take constructive feedback for what it is, then I hope you'll consider joining us today.

If you think you might want to work with me and the rest of my team at Stompernet to grow your business, I know you'll want to take the time to fully explore what this is about. Our latest video shows you exactly what it looks like inside the Stompernet portal - it's only 11 minutes long, so take a peek.

You don't have a lot of time, though - the doors open at 3pm Eastern, and membership is limited.

Because this is a *very* high touch program, we have to limit the number of members we can take in. We can help more people than you might think, but a lot less than what the demand has been. That's why we haven't reopened our doors in more than a year.

We might be open for 24 hours this time, or we might be open for a lot less than that. Once we're full, the doors will close again.

There are some really cool "fast action bonuses" offered to those who take decisive action and join quickly… If you need to take your time and think it over, I understand completely, but I don't want to hear any complaints if you miss out.

If it helps your thinking any, there is a 30-day guarantee so you can spend almost an entire month with us before you decide if it's really right for you.

All right. Enough already - you know what's going on. If you already know you want to join, you can camp out on the countdown page, or wait for an email notification. Once the doors open, there's going to be a mad rush to get those bonuses.

Thanks!

Dan

UPDATE TUESDAY MAY 27:

We had some duplicate signups on Friday, so the doors are open to fill those last few spots, right now. We'll close again by 6pm Eastern time (US).

In fact, there's some guy named Aaron (probably not even his real name) ranked #1, 2, 3 and 4… obviously he has some kind of "in" with Google.

Proof that "Aaron Wall" gets special treatment!

Even though Google "claims" to treat subdomains like folders, he still has 4 listings, including one with a bunch of extra links! Clearly Google's "organic' engineers are HAND EDITING this SERP out of fear that this Aaron fellow will come over to the Googleplex and eat all their free organic hot dogs.

But it gets worse!! After investigating, I discovered that he doesn't even *sell* a book any more. That's right - not a book to be found, and Google still dedicates 14 links on page 1 of the SERP to this clearly irrelevant site.

If the definition of SPAM is "sites positioned above mine," this Aaron character is clearly a SPAMmer in the extreme… even if you overlook all of the "thin affiliate" sites for his "product" that are also Positioned Above Mine (TASPAM?).

Clear evidence that the -12 penalty exists!

Well, not only do I have an SEO book, it's even free. Clearly Google has slapped me with some kind of penalty or filter. I can prove this, because you have to go all the way to page 2 to find my site at #13:

Now, since my book is obviously better than no book at all, for people who are searching for an SEO book, my site, quite obviously, should be ranked #1. Why isn't it? Clearly, further research into this "-12" phenomenon is required.

You can help advance this "SEO revolution" - act now!

Since I can't "prove" that the -12 penalty exists without attempting to escape from this filter, I need everyone who likes my book, and believes that it's better than no book at all, to link to my site with anchor text like "seo book," "free seo book," "aaron wall sucks organic hot dogs," "best seo book," "this site actually offers an SEO book you can read," and "world's best SEO book slapped by -12 penalty."

In a cause like this, there's no room for the wishy-washy. If you believe in good search results… if you believe in truth, justice, and fair play… you know what you must do.

We'll talk more soon, comrades.

Thanks!

Dan

If you haven't read the 2007 edition, because you've been waiting for this, now is the time, and yes it's still free. If you've already read the 2007 edition, don't get too excited, because not very much has changed. Download here.

Sorry if you were expecting something radically different, but the point of the "fast start" system is that it doesn't have to change all the time. I can't reinvent SEO again, unless something big happens.

As I told someone the other day, the only thing that seems to never change in SEO is the persistent myth that the search engines "change the rules" all the time.

There are minor rewrites on Keyword Strategy, some more detailed advice for Site Structure, a little bit in Link Building, and a few other notes of newness here and there.

A big thanks to all of my readers for your help and support over the past year and change. In case you're wondering, PPC Fast Start is still on track for June 1 release… check out my video on Adwords if you want a sense of how "different" it's going to be.

SEO Fast Start Live Training June 25 & 26:

The first "SEO Fast Start Live" training is all set, for June 25 & 26 in the Dallas / Ft. Worth area. Addison, TX to be specific. The Crowne Plaza. If you want to attend, go grab the early bird discount while there's still space - it's just $97 a seat until next Wednesday, so all you have to think about is whether you can get there.

Once I have numbers, we'll get back to everyone next week on the room discounts. We got a GREAT classroom for this - power hookups for every student so you can use your laptop, etc.

Hope to see you there!

June 25-26, 2008 - Addison, TX (Dallas / Fort Worth Area)

Okay, folks… it's on! The only question remaining is… will you be there for this one-of-a-kind event?

This is not your usual SEO training or conference…

If you want the basics of SEO, read my book. If you want to get more out of your paid and organic search efforts, I hope you'll be able to attend.

During this intensive 2-day training, we will discuss how SEO and PPC fit into the larger picture of your business… how to develop better strategies, tactics, and processes to maximize your return on investment from search engine marketing.

Topics will include:

• The "Fast Start" planning process
• Why "branding" is not a waste of time… Seriously!
• Keyword strategy & positioning tactics
• Content development and relationship marketing
• "Beyond the basics" strategies & tactics for Adwords advertisers
• Copywriting for Titles & Descriptions - selling the click
• Marketing, promotion, and link building that pays you back
• Social media strategies for traffic & links
• Lots of time for Q&A

A more formal agenda will be released in a couple weeks, as I get confirmation from speakers etc. If you don't know me well enough to trust that this event will be worth your time, I'm sorry - maybe there will be a few spots open when you're ready to decide.

For everyone else, I have a very special offer:

Early Bird Price - Just $97 per Person!
(Available for a limited time only.)

This is a limited time offer - the price will go up has gone up to $297 per seat.

Space is limited, and I fully expect this event to sell out. Once we've sold all the seats, we're sold out… I will not be able to get more space, nor do I want to offer a training to hundreds of people all at once.

I hope to see you there…

Click here to reserve your spot @ $297!

(You will be taken off site to register, and returned to this page)

The venue is the Crowne Plaza - Galleria/Addison, in Addison TX, about 2- minutes from DFW or Love Field airports. If you sign up, wait until next week - we'll get you details on the discount rate for the rooms then.

Thanks!

Dan Thies

PS - Feel free to post questions below - I'll do my best to answer everyone.

Because I am not finished with my final read-through, and I insist on doing that before I publish… The release of the 2008 edition will be put off until tomorrow morning, instead of tonight. I'm sure we'll all survive an extra few hours without it.

The big burning question is: should you read the 2008 edition, if you've already read the 2007 edition? The answer is, it's up to you. But there's no rush.

The only changes that I consider significant are in the chapters on Site Structure (which I think is better written now) and link building (where there are some new opportunities worthy of discussion). Oh, and if you didn't grok the Keyword Strategy chapter, give it another try with the 2008 edition, I did a minor rewrite on that.

Your site will not burn to the ground if you continue to rely on the advice I gave in the 2007 edition. In spite of what you may have heard, SEO just doesn't change that fast.

*If this turns out to be a 'punctuality' award or something like that, I will feel seriously cheated. I want him to be "bad-ass of the year" or something, at least…

That's because, for most Adwords advertisers, the title of this post is very accurate. Most advertisers are doing split testing all wrong.

If you're doing  A/B, you're robbing yourself of profits at every step.

That's because, in a typical A/B split test, what you're doing is keeping your Control (the best performing ad) running, and creating a new test ad to run against it. Doing it that way is perfectly normal, but it's also completely, utterly, and totally wrong.

Most of the time, these test ads fail to beat the control… and predictably so. Your Control is the Control because it's doing well. After a few rounds of testing, it becomes less and less likely that your test ad will beat the control.

The "usual method" of ad testing delivers invalid results - here's why:

• The Control has a strong performance history, but your test ad has no performance history.
• As a result, your test ad may be ranked lower on the page, leading to lower CTR and (quite possibly)  conversion.

In other words, your test ad might have been better - but it didn't get a fair chance! This means that you may have already rejected many great ads, because you didn't test them correctly.

But that's not the worst part! "Control vs. test ad" also loses money:

When you run two ads in equal rotation, your Control is only getting half of the available ad impressions.

When a test ad fails fails to deliver good click-through and conversion rates, you've just given up as much as 50% of the profits that you would have had, if you had just left your ad group alone.

Wouldn't it be better if you could construct a valid test that didn't bleed money? Here's how it's done…

Step 1: Set Up A Valid Test

Instead of running your test ad against the Control, you create multiple copies of your Control.

How many copies you make is determined by how many of the ad impressions you want to go to the test ad.

In the example above, we've created 3 copies of the Control, left the Control running, and set up one test ad. Therefore, the test ad only gets 20% of the ad impressions.

This method leaves far less of your profit at risk.

It also allows you to run a valid test, by comparing the performance of your test ad against the copies of the Control only.

Since none of the ads in the "testing pool" has performance history, you can have far more confidence in the test results.

This method has reversed the results of many "close misses" I had with the old method of testing, which I was using myself until 2006.

Step Two: End Test (Fail) or Ramp Up To Full Test

In one of my many "hallway conversations" at the last Stompernet Live event, Andy Edmonds (Chief Scientist @ Stompernet and a real expert in testing) pointed out the real advantage of this method… which is that failed tests usually "fail early."

Scientific testing types have a much more formal language for this, of course, but I got tired head when he explained that part of it.

I'll just summarize the main points for you:

• You can usually kill your test ad pretty early because most test ads will be obvious failures.
• Running 3 copies of the Control actually accelerates your testing most of the time.
• If the test ad appears to perform well, you can progressively eliminate copies of the Control to ramp up the pace of the test.
• The final test is the validation test, where you run your Test Ad vs. Control - but now, you're doing it right!

Since I've started doing this "Andy's way," my ad tests are running even faster than before. Way cool.

But what's the real goal of all this testing? Higher click-through rates? Lower cost per click? These statistics are merely means to a greater end, my friend, and they can often lead you astray.

Indulge me for a minute, please. I didn't get to be the "Keyword Guru" for nothing, you know…

There's one other huge mistake that most folks make when they're split testing ads - they don't compare the business performance of their ads, just the click-through rate.

The problem should be obvious - you aren't trying to buy traffic, you're trying to buy customers. Actually, that's only sort of true. What you're really trying to buy is profit. Specifically, what you really want to achieve is the maximum possible profit per keyword.

At Stompernet, we call this statistic "Profit Per SERP"

Understanding how much profit you make every time one of your targeted keywords gets searched is a powerful idea. One of the most important metrics that any enlightened website owner will learn to measure and improve. It's the KEY to search marketing success.

You have a lot of control over every variable in the search marketing equation, except for one thing…

You can NOT change the number of times people carry out a given search.

During the month of May, some number of people are going to search for "mortgage rates," or "baby gifts," or "free seo book." We are powerless to change this number.

The number that we're trying to change is our average profit for each of those searches.

By doing Adwords right, you can change that number, and in doing so, change the rules of the game.

We'll talk more later.

For now, I'd like to invite you to watch the 50 minute instructional video that I prepared for you, with the help of master video editor Andy Jenkins. Watch online or download the Quicktime - but do watch… you don't want to miss this.

Best of the week: The SEO Guide to Information Architecture, by Adam Audette
Goes a little farther than I would into the whole theme concept, which is a fine way to look at site structure but pretty meaningless for SEO.

Darned good, from April 16: Wake up, real estate bloggers, there is no money in the long tail of search for niche blogs so stop chasing it by Mary McKnight
Close to a rant, but just this side of the fence. Mary writes mainly for realtors, but this is good perspective for all of us.

Best of the rest…

Web 2.0 Expo - Creating a Social Strategy
Lee Oden
referencing Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li of Forrester (authors of Groundswell)

Economies of scale in the very personal groundswell
Josh Bernoff

Social technology marketers bullish in face of recession
Josh Bernoff

Targeting Conversions and Traffic with Long Tail Writing
Jennifer Laycock

7 Habits Of Incredibly Effective Bloggers
Sarah McHarry

Some Thoughts on SEO Ethics:  Matt McGee, Michael Gray, Jeff Quipp, Jim Hedger and more
MelissaF

The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet
Danny Dover

Google Leaks Quality Score Variables (Pscore, mCPC and thresh) in Search Results
Eric Lander

Blogger’s to do checklist before hitting the publish button
Jennifer Slegg

Twitter Wrote This Column For Me
Chris Winfield

How to Analyze Your Site with Del.icio.us
Ann Smarty

Holy Mother of Linkbait
Jane Copland

How to get your Blog Traffic to Convert in 5 Easy Steps
Jennifer Osborne

Why Microsoft + Yahoo! makes sense – and why it won’t work (Deal's off, BTW…)
Charlene Li

Comment Kahuna allows you to search for blogs and posts on a topic. So far, pretty harmless. The feature that's being touted so widely is the ability to search for blogs that aren't using nofollow on their comments. I'm sure we can all see what might be disruptive about that.

Andy Jenkins posted his thoughts on the Stompernet Blog, about the right way for commenters to participate in blog communities, and I couldn't agree more. Comment Kahuna can be used for good, or evil… OK, maybe not evil, just unwise.

A cool thing happened after he posted - the first comment comes from Andy Beard, who does exactly what Andy Jenkins said commenters should do - he added value to the discussion. Kudos to both Andys for bringing some signal to the web, and not just with this one post.

Mr. Beard and I disagree as often as we agree, but I will argue to the end that he brings something important to the conversation.