Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I agree with Kane. While the other service provider isn't be forthright, they could still be delivering results to these dentists. Question is, are they showing it with phone calls and etc? Generally it'd be nice if ALL internet marketing providers were transparent, but it's wishful thinking.

But I'll also add that any smart dentists takes advantage of both SEO and PPC to drive traffic and new leads. While I focus PPC services I encourage my clients (some dentists) to also engage in SEO services because they are complementary. A recent study from Google Research shows that even with high organic rankings, paid ads will add incremental traffic.

I don't think anyone can accurately say what the threshold is, or if there is a single number for all sites. I've read somewhere a while back that the threshold is around 30 anchor links that are specifically for optimization (and not for user's benefit).

If you still have heavy footers, your links can be immediately reduced with a redesign of that area. Removing internal and barely used navigation elements will help too. Analyzing your site flow via Google Analytics can help you figure out where to tighten a page and get rid of links that no one is clicking on.

In general I think we all have to become more purist, and sparse in our internal anchor text linking. And then get very creative with designing a very good navigation and architecture for our audience. The Rational Surfer Model lends some insight into this too.

I like Boost CTR. It's win-win.

You have the option to pay only if their ad beats your current best ad. So you really have nothing to lose.

And their competition is fair. They've built a carefully thought out algorithm to measure the performance and to pit their ad against your defending champion. It involves both an improvement in metrics, and a "Confidence" factor that the ad is indeed better. Pretty cool.

Isn't this just a reflection of Google Venice affecting the algorithm? Now, search queries without geo modifiers will also return local results if Google believes it is relevant.

While I agree with EGOL, that no one will be able to do it as well as you given your depth of knowledge on your business and audience, I still think it makes sense to hire an expert.

(I'm over generalizing in a preachy dramatic way to make a point, so take it for what it is.) Smart capable people; we all have the same problem. We think: "Well, no one else can do it better than I can, so I'll just do it myself." But if we don't learn to accept support, and play to our strengths, we can only go so far in our ambitions to build something big.

One of the best decisions I made at 26, was to outsource my house cleaning. Seriously. It's a blessing. And now I just embrace it in every aspect of life, and business. Hiring others to do services, has given me space and capacity to build a better, and bigger business. I can build my own website, do my own taxes, and etc. I can probably build a really good website. But I don't want to be a good web designer. I want to be a PPC expert, and continue to develop that strength more deeply. So I outsource my website and taxes to a professional.

In that same vein, you need a professional PPC manager. Let it be their focus to maximize your campaign's effectiveness, and stay on top of the ever-changing PPC landscape. And you focus on being more you. I bet if we look at the numbers, then just one more extra conversion/sale/client per month would more than pay for the expertise, (not to mention the time you would save).

Loren first off in your number crunching, I'd suggest you calculate a weighted average of your Quality Score, whereby you take into account the number of impressions for each keyword.

This is my general thought based on limited knowledge of your account:

The most tell tale factor is that you have an aged account of 2+ years with a lousy historical CTR. This is going to greatly impact the QS of any keywords you add to your account no matter how relevant (or how much better you've gotten at creating relevant campaigns). Your predicted CTR is terrible, so your QS reflects that.

There is an implied volatility, and what I haven't been able to figure out is, how much change it takes to impact your QS. I've noticed that if your future CTR is really good, and your keywords have high volume impressions and clicks, the QS can improve very quickly (sometimes within days). But if the new keywords you've added are low volume, it can take a long time before your QS improves to reflect the underlying relevance.

George Michie of RKG wrote a detailed blog (rant) post about Quality Score, and while it doesn't directly answer your question, it does educate you on what goes on in that "black box."

Having tried Wordstream, and more recently Wordwatch this answer still remains true. I keep coming back to excel, and good stats analysis.

But I have found Boost CTR to be somewhat useful for crowdsourcing ad copy.

Soooo... we ran our test with Vertical Search Works. Like Kristi's experience, we received traffic but the conversion rate was terrible, and well below par of our other paid advertising campaigns.

While I think their account service people were very nice, I did get into a bit of a healthy discussion (argument) with one of their Sales dudes about the "value" of their service and product.

This guy spent a good 15 minutes trying to convince me that the value shouldn't be measured in just conversions, but also in the 2 million plus impressions the ads received. I shot back and said that aside from lack of conversions which was obviously a driving force for an e-commerce client, site engagement in way of bounce rate, time on site, and page views were also below par. I also said impressions was a weak argument and a point with no merit given the client's goals (MORE SALES). This discussion then devolved into him defending the efficacy of their ad program, with me making funny faces as I listened (which thankfully he could not see).

Look, VSW sales dude: performance of your ads sucked. Plain and simple. I was both a little amused and a little annoyed that this guy was trying to convince me I was wrong.

Anyone care to agree, (laugh with me), or play devil's advocate?

Interesting. Okay we're are planning to run a test for one of our clients too. I'll post back in a couple months if we see any results. Thanks for the quick reply.

Kristi, Did you ever go for the program with Vertical Search and how did it turn out?

Your question isn't clear. What is the intent of your research?

If it is just keyword research how are you getting data on CTR? If you're using the Keyword Tool, you will only see data on Impression Volume. And if you're looking for keyword opportunities, then it it's both the estimated Impressions and the CPC that are relevant data points for your research.

If you're currently advertising already and looking for some insight as to how that should affect your SEO, then yes CTR is also something to look at, but I'd actually look at Click volume, and ensure that your SEO efforts are targeting those keywords.

Is it valuable and how is the community?

Although laterally related, I think it's also a good idea to understand the concepts behind how an Adwords auction works and how they evolved the product. I recently read In the Plex and it offered some insights I hadn't read anywhere else.

Yes, there has been an algorithmic change to Google's PPC for QS. Your Quality Score is now being weighted to make landing page relevancy more important. IMHO this is great news for savvy marketers and end users.

Here's a post from Google on the Ad quality improvement. Marin Software's findings suggest that this change has had a limited impact on under 11.25% accounts and affected by no more than 0.25 QS. I also believe that the rollout of shifting the weight towards LPs has been small, but I predict that more weight will be placed on LPs as paid search matures.

I'd also speculate and add that Google Website Optimizer tool is probably being scrutinized and that the functionality of that tool will be upgraded soon inline with this change.

Both Vimeo and Viddler are good options. Each have pro/cons depending on your needs. Most times I lean towards Vimeo, I think their user experience is easier and their organization of content is nicer.

I disagree with writing HTML by hand. That doesn't sound like a good use of time. There are several good options that take the time/pain away of creating and managing LPs. Premise for Wordpress, Optimizely, Unbounce and Visual Website Optimizer to name a few. Which one you'll prefer the most just depends on your needs

Sounds like the reviews you've accumulated are for your company as a whole. Not for specific products. You'll need product specific reviews for them to to show up in Google's product extensions.

Comparing SEOmoz to SpringMetrics is comparing apples to oranges.

At the same time SpingMetrics business metrics dashboards are nice. And while you can pull the same raw data & some of the stats from Analytics, the way they present the data is nice, and does save time for business & marketing decision making.

Weird, I just sent this blog post link to another person with the same question.

Long scrolling narrow pages have always irked me. The design goes against every design sensibility and principal. It's the kind of feeling you know in your bones. But lots of A/B testing has shown that it works. And I couldn't find a designer that challenged this incumbent with a better design. Until NOW.

Check out 37Signal's post on their tests to see what performed BETTER:http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2991-behind-the-scenes-ab-testing-part-3-finaltheir previous posts part 2 and part go into more detail.But wow, do the results surprise you? They made me happy and relieved all at the same time.

Using Wayback would be strange.It's just a quick WHOIS lookup to determine age.