Webmaster-Level: Beginner

Looking through all of the information in Webmaster Central can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re just getting started with a website. This is why we’re excited to introduce a new set of educational materials in a program called Webmaster Academy. Webmaster Academy provides practical and easy to understand lessons for beginner webmasters to help you improve your site with topics like getting your site in our index, providing search engines with helpful information about your video and image content, and understanding Webmaster Tools features.

We’ve organized the content to represent what beginner webmasters should know in a way that’s both structured and modular, meaning you can go through the whole curriculum, or pick and choose your own path. Once you’ve read the articles, you can easily delve deeper into each topic, as we provide links to more in-depth articles. Most lessons are also accompanied by a video from the Webmaster Central YouTube Channel. If you’re looking to understand search and improve your site, Webmaster Academy is for you!

Have feedback? Excellent. Post it in our Webmaster Help Forum.

Posted by Julian Prentice, Search Quality Team Contributor: Oliver Barrett, Search Quality Team Contributor: Alexi Douvas, Search Quality Team

A solid understanding of localization is now critically important for any company looking to drive into international markets.  No matter what product or service is being sold, it sure that it will face stiff competition both locally and from abroad, which is why localization – translating and adapting content for specific markets – is absolutely [...]

AdWords marketers’ days of regularly refreshing on all their keywords may be over — or at least that activity may not be quite so necessary. Google is releasing a new report — Auction Insights — that helps marketers understand how their ads stand, compared to others in the... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Meet nearly 40 leading solution providers. Attend 2 sessions on emerging search engine marketing topics. Attend Matt Cutts’ keynote via simulcast. Connect with your next client, employer, vendor or mentor at three networking events. Search Marketing Expo – SMX Advanced hits the Bell Harbor... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

I had an interesting email hit my inbox, someone showing me how a Google employee was “100%” sure there had been no Penguin Update. There was, of course, and it’s a reminder that just because someone is a Googler, that doesn’t mean they know how Google Search works. Google... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

With the trends that we are seeing in the search engines as they become more and more social, I think it is fair to assume that social sharing will be a major part (or at the very least, be a piece) of consideration in any future updates. This is exactly why it’s more important than ever [...] Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

The Search Alliance between Yahoo and Microsoft had some unintended beneficiaries (now casualties). Yahoo’s former senior director of business management, Robert Kwok, has pled guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud, after being accused that he told a mutual fund manager in July 2009... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Global domination. This is what appears to have been Facebook’s goal in 2012, according to the World Map of Social Networks, which is based on both Google Trends for Websites and Alexa. It would be difficult to describe differently the success of a company which holds the lead in 127 out of 136 countries. In [...]

Our link building tool review series continues today with Link Prospector by Citation Labs. A joint venture between Garrett French and Darren Shaw, Link Prospector is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina and has been online since February 2012. Garrett and Darren continue to add features to the... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

One of the biggest challenges to delivering an effective social media campaign for big, multinational brands is executing the strategy on a practical level: you’ll have multiple networks, profiles, languages, and social media managers to control across different countries. Implementing your... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

What is this “Cookie” Law? In 2009, the council of the European Union approved a new legislation that required internet users to consent to the use of cookies. On May 25th, 2011 the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) came into being. This new law states that the internet user must give his express consent to websites [...]

Posted by wrttnwrd

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

By dumping Facebook, GM’s doing it wrong

GM made a huge stink last week when they pulled their $10 million Facebook advertising budget.

They’re doing it wrong. And you can learn some valuable lessons from their mistake:

Facebook is the best display advertising deal on the internet

The Register pointed out that Facebook ads average a .05% click-through rate. Click-through rate is the total number of clicks on an ad, divided by the number of ad views, or impressions. That’s very low, compared to .4% on Google’s Display Network.

But you can purchase ads on both networks on a cost-per-click basis: You only pay if someone actually clicks on the ad. If a GM ad shows up on my Facebook page, and I glance at it but move on, GM doesn’t pay a thing. But I still saw GM’s ad. It’s free display advertising!

There’s no way to pin a value on that glance, but there is a value. If nothing else, GM just occupied attention otherwise available for Toyota.

Managed correctly, Facebook advertising is an unbeatable display ad bargain. GM’s losing a huge branding opportunity.

Understand earned media

Social media is earned media. Selling in earned media is a two-step process:

1. Attract and build an audience over time.
2. Then you sell to that audience.

Facebook ads boost step 1.

GM claims Facebook ads aren’t delivering results. But they’re measuring the wrong results, I’ll bet: They’re looking at clicks, sales and web site traffic. They should be looking at new followers, share of voice, and the quality of the following they build.

You can grow your brand without paid Facebook ads, by posting to your Facebook page. In our tests, 2-4 great posts per day is the minimum effective pace for a major brand. Post less often and your brand shrinks. General Motors posts every 1-2 days, at best. With that pace, and without ads, they can’t grow their brand.

Don’t repeat their mistake: Understand earned media. Your Facebook following is a long-term asset. It’s a community that’s primed for your marketing message. Neglect it and you’ll fail. GM has to either maintain their ad spend (clearly they won’t) or step up their other efforts (hopefully they will). As it stands now, when GM stops their ad campaign, their Facebook page will stagnate.

Learn to measure earned media

You can measure the return from earned media on Facebook. Run Facebook-specific offers. GM could run a regional campaign with participating dealers and offer cash back, or free oil changes for 3 years, or similar. See how many people participate. Use the performance of those campaigns over time to track the value of your average Facebook follower.

That’s only part of the value generated, but it’s a start. It lets you sketch out a comparison of ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ ads, content and offers.

Learn to measure earned media performance.

Don’t amputate for a hangnail

$10 million is a huge Facebook spend. Chances are, GM can optimize it and improve performance, or reduce waste by removing non-performing ads and segments. Instead, they’re chucking the entire budget baby out with the bathwater. If GM applied the budgeting technique to print and television, they’d shut down those campaigns, too.

If you manage a Facebook campaign, you’ll hit a point where you want to turn it off. Don’t. Instead, test, refine and improve. Use Facebook’s amazing segmenting tools to create precisely-targeted ads.

Don’t hack off a limb because of a hangnail. That’s what GM is doing.

Keep perspective

Facebook ads represent .5% of GM’s total marketing budget. To be worthwhile, Facebook ads would need to generate 45,000 cars sold. Staggering numbers for you and I, but for a company that sold 9 million cars last year, that’s a totally achievable goal.

My last advice: Don’t shut down an ad spend that’s less than 1% of your budget unless you’re 100% certain it’s a failure. When the stakes are low and the potential high, keep perspective. Bottom line, that’s what GM forgot to do, and it’s going to hurt them a lot more than Facebook in the long run.

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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: “Ads Related To…” Text Officially Rolls Out On AdWords’ Top Ad Block We’ve seen “Ads related to…” followed by the... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

We’ve seen “Ads related to…” followed by the search query before, but now it’s at the top of the top ad block and it’s rolled out officially for most — if not all — search terms on Google AdWords. The new text appears at the top of the yellow AdWords... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Successful SEO is all about leveraging the right amount of motivation. There are a lot of technical aspects of SEO. But really, take all the techno-mumbo-jumbo away and what you’re left with is concepts of how to motivate search engines to pay attention to your site and apply the right amount of “value” to it [...]

The need for integration between social media and SEO is steadily increasing. We have all read the articles about the way that content is +1′ed by people you follow is shown in Google results (or how content Liked by a Facebook friend is elevated in Bing results). You have also most likely... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

If you are a technophile, an online marketing specialist or a mobile marketer it can be easy to forget that a large part of your target market might not own a smartphone. This can be especially true if your demographic is broad reaching, and includes the upper and lower ends of the age spectrum... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

While there are plenty of great articles on the Search Engine Journal website that dissect current SEO best practices and provide excellent recommendations to current webmasters, all the advice in the world won’t make a difference in your website’s success if you don’t understand the terminology that’s being used in the first place! So if [...]

Google AdWords has seen a flurry of releases recently. Some have been good (Display Campaign Optimizer) and others bad (rotate changes) for advertisers. Many of these features are items Google wants to see as they help increase their bottom line or make it very easy to advertise. However, these new... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

European Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia issued a statement this morning offering “preliminary conclusions” of the EU’s  investigation of numerous antitrust complaints against Google. It lays out “concerns” about Google’s market power in four areas.... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.