With all the buzz going around about the new up and coming search engine, Cuil (pronouced “cool”) we obviously had to kick the tires a bit to see how this bad boy would drive. As CNN reports, Cuil was created by ex-Google engineers, and who better in the business to drive the technology behind a search engine than those that helped to create the current market share leader.

While Cuil claims that the advantage of the new search engine over other engines like Google is that the results will be displayed and ordered based on the content of the site more so than the quality of the site and the links pointing to it, it also appears that they took a stab at a new visual layout as well. Unlike search engines that have come before it, Cuil definitely has a different way of showing results with the top 3 (or 1, 4 and 7 in the search results - it doesn’t really say) results spanning the first row of the results with the rest down below. On smaller monitors, this definitely gives a much larger advantage to those that appear in that first row.

Cuil also appears to grab random images from the site and displays them next to the result. Some are appropriate, some probably detract but by displaying pictures next to the result it gives even further advantage to those that are shown with better pictures than those without pictures, regardless of the value of the page itself.

The one advantage that I do think that is visible in its current state is the ability to navigate through similar subjects and categories with ease. Sure, other engines employ this subject fairly readily, especially Yahoo, but Cuil does it without overpowering the page and with fairly simplistic functionality and use.

Cuil also seems to claim over 120 billion indexed pages, which far surpasses that of Google. I only seem to get results half of the time though when searching for things and am greeted by the following page:

Really, 120 billion pages indexed and nothing about call tracking? Clicking search a second time found results, but a 50% success rate at even showing any results is nothing to write home about. Google killer, definitely not. Overtaking Hotbot, a fair possibility.

Check out our friend Jeff Hudson as the guest star on this week’s episode of PPC Rockstars. There are some great PPC tips on this episode like using Speed PPC, building effective campaigns from scratch, and much more so make sure you give it a good listen.

How fast does your website load? You can test out your pages with this web page speed test tool.

There has been a lot of attention on page load speed lately. There used to be more focus on page load speed back when everybody was on 56k modems, but it seems a lot of the best practices from those days have gone out the window since high speed internet came along. I’d like to remind people that it’s still important to optimize the speed of your pages. It can affect how much traffic your site receives, how many vistors stay on your site after you get them there and the bottom line…how much money your site makes. This is especially true for ecommerce sites that naturally get more browsing and page views per visitor.

To make this as clear as possible: Slow loading pages = Money being lost.

Here are 3 key areas to consider:

Usability - How quickly a webpage loads has always been important for your visitors. Personally, I can’t stand waiting for slow webpages…it’s like Chinese water torture sometimes. I have a super fast computer (3.1 Gigawatts) and a high speed cable internet connection (3.2 Gigawatts), but I would still sacrifice my left arm to further cut that time in half (Ok, maybe not my left arm). My point is that your visitors won’t like browsing your site if the pages load slowly. If they still continue to browse because they really want something on the site, chances are they won’t come back unless they really have to.

SEO - All things being equal, sites with faster loading pages tend to rank higher than sites with slower loading pages. Search engine representatives have never come out and said this word for word but they have hinted at it in various ways. For example, do a search for a keyword that your site ranks for in Google and you’ll find a number under each listing (looks something like this “45k”) that tells you how large the page size is. There is no hard and fast rule for how quickly your pages should load in order to rank higher but if your site’s pages are larger than your competitor’s you should probably look into making them smaller. Of course this doesn’t mean that if you have a slower site you won’t rank at all, it just makes it easier to rank if your pages load faster.

PPC - Google knows how important page load time is to visitors, which is why they recently added page load speed as a factor in your adwords quality score. Making page load speed a part of quality score sends a clear signal that Google thinks this is an important issue. Unless you like to pay more for clicks, you should definitely think about how to speed up your pages. If Google thinks it’s important for their sponsored listings you can bet they think it’s important for their organic listings as well.

So how do you make your pages load faster? There are a few ways that all have varying degrees of effectiveness depending on what’s slowing you down.

Code Bloat - The more code your pages have the longer it’s going to take for them to load. Having a high code to content ratio also slows down the crawl rate of search engines. Moving CSS and Javascript code to external files is highly recommended so that the browser or search engine only needs to download it once instead of every time a new page loads. Also, remove extraneous code like comment tags and unneccessary large amounts of white space.

Images - Having extremely large images can severely slow down your pages. When I say large, I mean large in file size, not height and width. Use any of the free image editing programs out there like Jpeg Wizard to compress your images. Sixty percent quality compression on jpeg images is usually good enough for the web. Also, adding simple height and width attributes to your images increases the speed that the browser can download the images.

Gimmicky things - Try to stay away from gimmicky things on the page such as Flash, audio or videos that play automatically. These are also usually bad for useability, especially audio. Sorry, nobody wants to hear the cheesy background music on your site so get rid of it. Anything that takes extra time to load on the page will slow it down including RSS feeds and widgets.

Analytics - Put analytics tracking code towards the bottom of your pages. If there is ever a problem and the tracking code doesn’t load at least the whole page will load first so that your visitor will see the content. This is more a usability issue than anything else.

File compression - If your site is on an Apache server you can also do some fancy footwork by enabling Apache file compression. That’s probably something that your web developer can implement for you.

In the end it really comes down to usability and the visitor. Improving your SEO and PPC is a byproduct of improving the user experience on your site. Make your visitors happy with speedy pages and everything else will fall into place.

When creating a commercial website there is an idea that is central to core sensibilities of the business model. That is, usually, at root, how does this site make money? In many cases, when creating a site, a business was preexisting, while other times a business model is based on what new marketing models can offer - web traffic. Neither case is a bad model in and of itself, and likewise, neither approach guarantees success. More to the point though, nothing can guarantee success, but there are ways to get a leg up on competition and to better position a website for success.

First there are keywords. In the web world, and as I’ve said before, this is the cornerstone of the search game. Fine and dandy. But what happens with keywords? They can’t just be stuffed into content and layered transparently in an attempt to game search engines. They can’t just be placed anywhere any longer. In PPC you can bid on them, but even Yahoo has tried to deny random bidding strategies by implementing a minimum CPC for a site to advertise for certain keywords based on relevence. Google has been doing so for some time.

As far as the stringent restrictions applied by search engines go: I think we can all live with that. Anyone reading this post has certainly used Google or one of its competitors within the last few days, and most likely some searching was done for a personal reason. Now personally, I’ve been searching for movie reviews, today’s MLB All Star game line up, personal products I wish to compare, and even local restaurant reviews. I go to these search engines because of the whole idea that I will be able to receive what I am searching for in a quick and efficient manner. If I did not receive what I wanted out of this search, I would refine my search - if this tactic often failed me, I would discontinue using the search engine that repeatedly failed me. That is, after all, the service they provide in order to get advertisers in front of my, your… our eyes.

Too often this idea just does not bleed through to PPC advertisers. At the current state of the PPC game, this is almost appalling. I know that the entry fee is easy and that’s part of the allure - anyone can enter the gate - but why would they want to enter? Traffic is enticing - it’s glamorous… they are looking at YOUR creation, YOUR idea. Don’t let ego seduce you into bad marketing.

The first thing to do with PPC is to identify keywords and group them. If some of these groups don’t have a place to go - a proper landing page - then these words should not be used. This is a good excercise to identify opportunities for other web pages, expanded content, or maybe even as a way to trim the fat. Any keyword should always have a place if money is going to be bid on it.

This idea concerning relevence is not simply for the benefits of paying less as far as advertisers are concerned. If your site sells shoes there are probably multiple layers to the site… if not this should probably be remedied. For example, if your site is about shoes and you bid on the keyword “shoes” then the home page may be the optimal page to send people (whether this keyword actually results in ROI is a totally different question). Now if you also have ad groups for specific brands, you should have a page set up for those specific brands. If you are dumping that traffic at the home page, you are not only going to have many bounces and back-hits from the page, but those who do stay on your site will have to click multiple places and learn your navigation in order to find what they initially thought they were getting to. It’s a bit of false advertising akin to saying 80% off, but with ultra-fine print underneath saying “some items,” or worse, “Puma shoes for sale,” when in fact not a single pair is visible in the store. If you don’t see them, do you ask for them? If you do ask, are you pleased you had to do so?

No one likes to be mislead. No one likes to click and navigate more than is necessary. So make the consumer’s job easy. Make it easy to buy what is advertised, or don’t advertise it. If you are bidding on a product type, make sure there is a page devoted to that product so you can send them directly there. At very least, the product should be visible on the page and should be found above the fold (within the default visible area of a clicked result). These product-type-specific searches will be fewer in number than the generic “shoes” - to be expected, but the page will display what was initially searched for, which will help conversion rates. If someone is looking for an exact product, they are typically further along in the sales cycle, exhibit being an educated consumer, and are generally more likely to act (take action, fill out a form, BUY!) if they see what they want…. of course price, selection, service, quality, etc. all play a factor (perhaps another post).

If there are ever related or tangential keywords for which you would like to advertise, hold off until you can offer what it is you are about to advertise. Your PPC budget will thank you, as will your shoppers.

***I realize this post is bereft of real world examples, so as I find new and interesting examples through my regular commercial life, I will be adding them to this post. Perhaps that will perk up a few ears and let whatever readers are out there key in on some of my shopping proclivities…

Finding the proper keywords is the cornerstone of any successful SEM campaign. I imagine every PPC manager out there begins a campaign with keyword research in order to find what keywords are going to generate the desired traffic to a website. This will typically include picking basic, generic keywords and finding similar search queries which will provide the basis for an extended, or long tail, keyword universe.

While gathering these initial nuts and bolts of a campaign negative keywords will also be identified, ensuring ads will not show if certain keywords are added to the query. Some of these negative keywords will be obvious, while others can be surprising as there are now so many unique industries and websites catering to niche markets. This type of research is invaluable since it is impossible to know a priori every possible query that could trigger an ad that, if clicked, will cost money resulting in no ROI. (Of course negative keywords are only valuable in a campaign if broad or phrase match terms are used - though that discussion will have to wait for a future post.)

The true value of a keyword lies in its ability to put relevant information in front of the searcher. Sometimes this goal breaks down, such as when there are conflicting search queries. For example, if someone searches for “green paint”, this can have a couple of different meanings: Green as a color or Green as in eco-friendly. If you are bidding on this keyword, it is important to identify not only the semantic value of the keyword; user intention can determine whether a certain keyword is profitable to use in a PPC campaign, and certain keywords may become more competitive due to semantics. In addition to semantic issues there are also long tail keywords which can easily trigger an ad if broad match or phrase match is used. There are literally millions of examples using Google Adwords Broad Match option - The keyword “Al Green” could show ads for “Al Green CD”, “Al Green Tshirt”, “Al Green MP3″, etc, depending on the market. It is always important to recognize the goals of the campaign and to truly know what is being sold and why… sure. But how is this kind of research best done when every keyword research tool out there starts to fail and an account is already live?

This is where Google’s Search Query Report can come in handy. This report can fill in the gaps for your PPC campaigns by providing the PPC manager with actual user generated search queries used in the live market. Unfortunately, Google Analytics does not show this even if you have a linked PPC and Google Analytics account. The terms that show in Analytics will merely show results on the keywords as they are entered into AdWords. If you had bid on the keyword “widget” as a broad match term, Analytics will show metrics for the keyword “widget”. But this is regardless of how many searchers not only saw the ad for that broad or phrased match keyword and then clicked even though they may have searched for a term like “green widget”.

Now what if the company doesn’t sell green widgets? Worse yet… what if the company or PPC manager had never even heard of a “green widget”? There is no way to stay ahead of every industry curve, and since many advertisers find themselves in a live market it is best to get the real data while it’s still out there and available. Now, pull that report and see what you’ve been missing.

Just don’t blame me when keyword popularity changes and we need to do a reverse keyword audit on your PPC campaign.