It struck a lot of Webmasters as ironic that Google made page speed a rank signal when AdSense scripts was one of the factors slowing sites down. According to Google, it slowed publisher sites by about 12%.

Gone are those days. Google developers improved the show_ads.js JavaScript needed by AdSense publishers and sped up delivery of ads. Google claims the changes will speed up publisher sites by a half second or more. After running Page Speed and YSlow tests, we’ve seen a noticeable improvement in scores. Publishers don’t have to upload new code since the change is automatic. Right now, the changes are working with Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer 8, with more browsers and versions included soon.

If you need to block the new ad version, set “google_enable_async = false” for each ad slot.

SEO Revolution Blog

Jerry West Speaking at PubCon Vegas

Nearly every person who achieves great success always knows the moment momentum swung in their direction. I remember my moment well. A hot and humid June in New Orleans … in 2005, just a few months before Hurricane Katrina hit. What happened in the Bayou?

PubCon happened.

While I had ten years of experience in web design in SEO at the time, I was just doing “okay” in my business … not great. I wanted greatness. I knew I had the knowledge and the drive, but I was missing a few key pieces. But I had no idea what those pieces were.

I had been a member of Webmaster World for about four years and I was always impressed with the knowledge the senior members shared. People like tedster, pageoneresults, incrediBILL, engine, g1smd, and countless others.

It just made sense that if I was going to turn the corner, I had to go to where all these people were. And go I did.

I still remember walking into the kick-off session an hour early and seeing Brett Tabke, who runs Webmaster World. I walked up and introduced myself. While I expected a brief chat, Brett took the time to ask about me, my business and what I hoped to get out of PubCon. “It’s not about attending all the sessions that you can Jerry, it is about meeting people, asking questions, meeting vendors and building relationships. You can’t just sit in the back of the room and expect people to come to you, you have to go them. PubCon started as a networking event and it still is. You have to take what you learn and actually do something with it.”

Taking what you learn and actually do something with it…those words stuck with me.

Almost every session I attended, I sat in the front, took notes, asked questions, followed up with the speakers afterwards and also those around me. I was bound and determined to figure out what I was missing. Before going to the next session I wrote down at least one thing I would do that night with my campaigns.

After the first day concluded, I went back to my room and the temptation was there to go to Bourbon Street and have a great time. But I had to keep my focus and apply what I had learned while it was fresh in my mind. Despite the obvious distraction, I kept my focus and applied each technique I had written down to my campaigns, closed my laptop and went out.

Upon returning back to the hotel, I checked email and usually I have 2-3 notices of sales during the evening, but this night I had 16. Seriously? 16? Awesome!!

I did the same thing on Day Two … sat in the front, asked questions, met more people, exchanged contact information, but today the exhibit hall was open. I spent a few hours talking to new merchants and building new relationships. That night was the “Meet the Google Engineers” party. Since I had preregistered, I was the first one through the door. I had more than 20 minutes of uninterrupted time with an engineer over search and I showed him all the issues and problems I was having. He gave me insight I hadn’t considered and once again, I returned to the room, applied the things I had learned to my campaigns and then went out.

When I got back to the room, I had 23 more orders than usual. First night 16, then 23, and after the third day, I had 28 more orders during a span when I would normally have 2-3. Was PubCon worth it? Absolutely. But the key was taking what I learned, molding it to my industry, applying it as soon as possible, tracking the results and making modifications where needed.

The bottom line is, I would not be where I am in my career today without the help of Brett Tabke and PubCon. So, if you’re stuck and you’re struggling with your campaigns, get to PubCon in Austin March 8-9. It could be the best decision of your career like it was mine.

If you go, make sure you go and introduce yourself. I’ll be presenting my “SEO in a Box” technique live. See you there!

Register for PubCon Austin

SEO Revolution Blog

Nielsen Company reported Monday August 1 that Android smartphones topped iPhone sales for the first two quarters of 2010. Within that time smartphones running Google’s Android operating system made up 27% of sales, while iPhone accounted for 23%.

While iPhone4 got the big song and dance in the media, Android phones quietly gained popularity and market share. Overall, however, more smarthphone users still own iPhones than do Android-based phones. Both fall behind Research in Motion (RIM), makers of the Blackberry which still runs the show, accounting for one-third of smartphone sales over the last six months thanks to all the QWERTY addicts. It’s interesting to note that Nielsen also did a brand loyalty survey in which 58% of RIM users said they would probably try another phone/carrier with their next purchase.

Another report by Canalys shows that shipments of phones running Google’s Android operating system grew 886% worldwide in Q2 2010!

SEO Revolution Blog

Today I am having a guest blogger, Ricky Breslin, take over and discuss his specialty – lead generation. I love Ricky’s approach as it is very much like my own; no-nonsense and full of real examples instead of posting theories.

Theories suck.

Take it away Ricky …

Want to see the inside of actual lead generation campaigns, using real money, with a nice pretty little picture? I know, this will be really weird considering that people never use real numbers and only talk about fictitious “businesses” they run and how successful they are.

(Please note: I do promote 1ShoppingCart & Aweber in the post because I actually use them and believe in them. If you click the links I would earn a small commission. If you’re not cool with that, just go directly to their website and order and you’ll get the same results)

Alright, now let me show you what really goes on behind the scenes of a real business trying to make real money online.

Okay, then – let’s roll!

There are 4 basic parts to successful lead generation.

1. Landing page with good call to action
2. Qualified traffic
3. Good follow-up
4. Simple A/B split testing

Don’t overcomplicate this.

The easy part is driving traffic, because you can buy it. Usually, if you’re doing lead generation with follow-up, the hardest part is figuring out if the campaign you’re running is actually working. If you’re straight up asking for the sale, it’s simple. Here’s why I’ve found this to be true…

Let’s make this easy. If I buy 100 clicks for .00 each, I just spent 0. If I’m selling a product for and have a 3% conversion rate, then I just made 3 sales, which means I made 0.

That’s just simple first grade math.

If this is the case right out the gate, then I’m going to try to scale this bad boy as hard as possible and really push it. This is all easily done with Google AdWords.

But what if you’re driving traffic to squeeze pages and only asking for an e-mail address? How do you know it’s paying off for you? Sure, you can forward the visitor straight to an offer after you get the visitor’s e-mail address, but what if you’re losing money, even though you’re getting a 30% opt-in rate and a ton of e-mail addresses?

THAT is what I want to explain to you today. I want to let you in on how to do and track lead generation if you’re just asking for an e-mail address (which can kind of suck).

To do this I use 1ShoppingCart, Aweber, and AdTrackz. You can use any tools you like, but these are what I use and they work great.

Here’s what to do…

When I create my campaigns I’m cool with breaking even every time. If I make a profit it’s great, but I’m cool with breaking even.

So, let’s start with the keyword “how to golf.”

I would take that keyword and create a campaign in Google AdWords for it. And let’s say that I pay .50 per click for that keyword and I drive each click to a well SEO’d page that Google likes.

It’s got all the fixin’s: great design, big call to action button, great copywriting, high quality images, good video, etc.

Now, let’s say I spend 0, which buys me 1,000 clicks. Out of those 1,000 clicks I have a 30% opt-in rate, which gives me 300 leads.

Now, I’m using double opt-in, so in reality, only 80% of the people will double opt in and go to the free video or whatever you’re giving away. So I REALLY got 240 straight-up leads – so basically I paid .08 for a real e-mail address from a real human being.

Except that you also have the people who unsubscribe right after they get your free stuff because they couldn’t care about you, your life, your products, or your business. I’ve found that about 5% of all leads do this.

So that leaves us with 228 real, breathing human beings on our e-mail list, at a cost of .19 per e-mail address at the end of the day.

Can you see why people go broke online and give up? They aren’t going this far, they usually give up after this step because they think they lost. But not us, we keep rolling.

Now, I’ll usually follow up with 5 e-mails, for which I use Aweber. And THIS IS THE KEY right here: in each e-mail you need to tell great stories and always do a soft pitch at the end of the story, offering your product as the solution to problem that you’ve described.

Don’t be afraid to tell your readers about your products. If your products are good, they NEED to be told as long as they work and are what you say they are.

So here’s what to do next…

We NEED to know if you’re follow-up is allowing you to break even. Remember, we spent 0 to generate 228 e-mail addresses. We need find out if it’s even possible to get our 0 back.

Here’s how to do that…

In 1ShoppingCart create an AdTracker for your follow-up for that campaign. So I would create “AR1 – How To Golf Campaign,” “AR2 – How To Golf Campaign,” etc.

What’s great about 1ShoppingCart is that their AdTracker tracks EVERYTHING down to the dollar once the person clicks. It’s beautiful.

But don’t be lazy and use the ugly link the AdTracker spits out. Make sure to make it a “Pretty Link” with AdTrackz. I recommend that you create a folder on your server called “link” for tracking purposes.

So if you have 5 follow-up e-mails for this campaign, your links will look like this…

http://www.domain.com/link/1.php (AR1 – How To Golf Campaign)
http://www.domain.com/link/2.php (AR2 – How To Golf Campaign)
http://www.domain.com/link/3.php (AR3 – How To Golf Campaign)
http://www.domain.com/link/4.php (AR4 – How To Golf Campaign)
http://www.domain.com/link/5.php (AR5 – How To Golf Campaign)

Now your links are “pretty” because your 1ShoppingCart AdTracker link is wrapped in Adtrackz, and you can track all your follow up e-mails down to the dollar.

I recommend that you send the e-mails 5 days in a row. So let’s say you just did all that. You’ve logged into 1ShoppingCart and found out that out of those 228 people, you made a total of 4 in sales from your soft pitches. Do you quit there?

I wouldn’t, although I would consider that a success because we got pretty close to breaking even and didn’t lose much money.

But the part that’s not truly quantifiable is what these e-mail addresses are worth to you 3 months, 1 year, and 3 years down the road.

Here’s where it just gets funky. Sure, the math is right in front of us in black and white, but consider this…

1. Maybe your customer buys an affiliate product related to your product because they like and trust you now.

2. Maybe your customer buys another product from you that wasn’t related to the one they originally opted in for.

3. Maybe your customer clicks on an ad in your website.

4. Maybe you have a big Christmas sale and your customer buys that.

5. Maybe your customer tells 8 friends about your website.

6. Maybe your customer posts your website or one of your blogs on their Facebook or Twitter page.

Why do I mention all of these possibilities? Because, at the end of the day, math only takes you so far in this game. Yes, it’s absolutely necessary to be on top of your numbers like crazy, but never forget that part of this game is an art, and that you can be as creative as you want.

What I’ve just explained to you is exactly how I create and track all of my lead generation. It’s one of the best ways I know, and I hope you can take something away from this you can use.

I’ve also attached a screenshot of my 1ShoppingCart account so you can actually see how they break the numbers down; it’s pretty cool.

And the nice part is you start to notice cool trends and things that work and don’t work with your 1ShoppingCart AdTracker data. This data allows you do more of the stuff that works for your market.

At the end of the day just remember that this game is never pretty, in fact it’s usually an ugly mess until you get all this stuff figured out. But once you do, everything is a lot more fun.

Originally Post: http://www.rickybreslin.com/blog/the-ugly-side-of-online-lead-generation/

SEO Revolution Blog

By now you should be at least familiar with Google Instant, a new search feature on Google. As users type in search terms, Instant predicts what the user is searching and instantly refreshes the SERPs.

Google Instant and Webmaster Tools

You’ve probably noticed an increase in page impressions lately. It makes sense that Google Instant is going to impact your page impressions. During the course of one search, SERPs update multiple times. If your pages appear for multiple “predictions” there will be an increase in impressions.

How Google Instant Measures Page Impressions

Before Instant Search was offered, page impressions occurred when the user typed in a word/phrase and clicked the Search button. With Google Instant, SERPs are updated as a person types. When someone pauses on a new results page for three seconds, that counts as an impression.

According to Google Engineer, Ben Gnomes, the average search query is 20 letters long and since Instant is basically search by character, not by word, this could result in a very noticeable increase in page impressions. It all depends on how fast someone types and if they pause for three seconds.

SEO Revolution Blog