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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Going from Good to Great: 5 Ways to Optimize Your PPC Performance'

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For those of you not keeping up with the WordStream blog (shame on you!), you might have missed the awesome Grade and Get Paid contest we ran in late 2013. I won't bore you with all the details, but as a quick summary, marketers were invited to use the AdWords Performance Grader twice to see how their PPC performance improved over a 30-day time period.

I'm proud to brag that my fabulous client GetOutfitted stole the prize and took home the Olympic gold! When I say gold I'm referring to a rainbow-wrapped PPC gift basket of $25K to spend in Google AdWords for 2014, plus a one-year subscription for WordStream's PPC Advisor software to help Kristi Anderson, VP of Marketing at Get Outfitted, spend this budget to maximize sales.

Even though this was not included in the prize details (big mistake), Kristi also received me! I've made myself available to provide a plethora of PPC support for her account this year.

GetOutfitted is an innovative startup that rents ski clothing and accessories for free doorstep delivery. Their prices are reasonable, brands are quality, and customers are happy – what's not to love! The small Colorado business has seen tremendous growth, but similar to several of my clients in the startup world they face some common PPC challenges, including:

• A limited budget
• A small staff (which inevitably leads to…)
• Limited time to spend in AdWords

These issues led Kristi to the magic solution – WordStream. She used WordStream's PPC Performance Grader to get an initial PPC performance report, and in just 30 days Kristi was able to:

• Increase her overall AdWords Performance Grader score from 15% to 83%
• Improve her Quality Score by over 50%
• Increase her average click-through-rates (CTR) from .26% to 6.32% (24X higher!)
• Grow her account activity from 39% to 72%

These stats are pretty impressive. So you may be wondering, where can Kristi possibly go from here?! Hasn't she done all that there is to do?

NOPE! With PPC there is ALWAYS room to improve.

To present this in simpler terms, if you spend 30 days working out and eating right you'll lose a significant amount of weight, but after that time-period if you go back to sinking into your IKEA couch with a tub of Ben & Jerry's glued to your hand, the weight will creep back on. The same goes for PPC – if you spend 30 days revamping your account and improving results, you cannot just ditch it after that. Your PPC account needs TLC just like your health.

Five Ways to Take Your PPC Performance from Good to Awesome

Kristi and I teamed up to do just that – maintain and grow GetOutfitted's PPC efforts to make them even more successful. After taking a deep dive through GetOutfitted's account, I came up with 5 optimization tactics if you're looking to raise the bar on your PPC performance.

#1: Build A Strong Account Structure

The foundation to achieving stellar PPC performance is a strong account structure. The first things I look at in any new client account that I'm investigating are:

1. how many keywords are in each ad group
2. how many ads are in each ad group
3. how relevant the keywords are to each other and the ads within each group

Far too often people dive into building out their account with sea salt in their eyes, and make a huge jumbled mess out of it.

Luckily Kristi's account structure wasn't a complete tornado, but there was room for some cleanup. She does have some tightly themed ad groups – which is great – for example she has one around ski wear and another focused on women's ski jackets and so on, but the majority of her ad groups are under one campaign. With more organization and relevancy throughout Kristi's account we'll have the ability to really home in on different areas of her business, as well as capture more qualified traffic that is likely to convert.

Typically it is best to have a few campaigns focused around each product, location, or any other themes that make sense for your business objectives. A great way to break down your campaigns and ad groups is by looking at the structure of your site.

TIP: Having several campaigns does not make sense for all businesses because it is going to stretch your budget across your account, so if you operate a smaller business with just one or two offerings and your budget is limited, you may want to have a "top sellers" campaign with a slightly higher budget, and then an alternative campaign with a smaller budget.

Looking at Kristi's site for GetOutfitted it is clear there are a few different ways we could break down her account. For example we could create different campaigns for: Men's, Women's, Juniors, Kids, and Accessories, and then have ad groups for the different products in each campaign. Since I feel there would be a lot of overlap here, I'd recommend breaking down the campaigns by products:

Ski Clothes – rent

Jackets – rent

Base Layers – rent

Pants – rent

Accessories – rent

And then having specific ad groups under each category, so for example:

Campaign: Jackets – Rent

        Ad Groups:

Rent woman jackets

Rent male jackets

Rent kid jackets

Rental jackets 

Within each ad group Kristi will want to have super tightly themed keywords relating to that ad group. Google suggests having no more than 30 keywords per ad group, and then two to three ads per ad group that are using the keywords within that ad text. You want your keywords, ads, and landing pages to all be extremely relevant to one-another, since the searcher will be much more likely to express genuine interest.

For example, if you were searching to rent a ski jacket, but were directed to an ad all about renting boots for kids, would you click? Likely not, because the product is irrelevant to what you are specifically searching for. Also, if the ad did display text reading "Rent Ski Jackets," but you were then directed to a landing page about renting boots, I would assume you would quickly leave the page and return back to Google. As you can see, relevancy and thinking about the searcher's intent are both very powerful and important factors in improving results.

#2: Focus on High-Performance PPC Keywords

How do you know if a keyword is high performing? This of course depends on your goals and which KPI's or key performance indicators are important to you. For Kristi, she identified that click-through rate and conversions are two very important metrics to determine if her campaigns are successful.

With that known, I dove into Kristi's keyword historical performance to see which keywords really stood out. The keyword "snow clothes rental" on broad match has a click-through rate of 7.43%, Quality Score of 9, and lots of conversions. This is crazy right? Just this one keyword is really dominating Kristi's account.

So what does this tell me? A few things – maybe we want to create an entire ad group around the keyword "snow clothes rental." This will allow us to focus in on this all-star keyword and get even more conversions and business from it. In the new ad group Kristi will want some variations of that keyword as well as to create some relevant ads that are super-specific to that keyword. So the headline would reading "Rent Snow Clothes Today" or "Snow Clothes Rentals Online."

Typically, once I've identified an awesome keyword I like to use a tiered bidding strategy on that word. Tiered bidding is when you bid on the same keyword with all four match types. The more restrictive you get with the match type, the more you'll want to bid because the quality of traffic will increase.

For example I might bid on "snow clothes rental" like so:

• Exact: $6 CPC
• Phrase: $5.75 CPC
• Modified Broad: $5.50 CPC
• Broad: $5 CPC

Why bid the highest on exact? The ROI is typically much higher because you are aware exactly what the searcher is looking for, as compared to broad match, which is much more open to interpretation since it includes close variants. However, with broad match the volume will be much higher.

#3: Further Build-Out Negative Keyword Lists

This should be a no-brainer, but continuously building out and monitoring your negative keyword lists will help significantly reduce costs and improve results (especially when using broader match types!). It is pretty easy to waste TONS of money on searches that are not related to your business if negatives are not set up properly.

Kristi uses a fair amount of broad and modified broad matched keywords so this will continue to be an area of focus for us, and something that I've taught Kristi to incorporate into her workflow.

The most effective way to identify negatives is of course by looking at what people are actually typing into Google to make your ads appear. Luckily, WordStream's PPC Advisor tool QueryStream does just that! The tool serves up actual search query data that can be used to identify and set up single word or multiple word negatives, add keywords to Kristi's account that she might want to be bidding on, and even create entirely new ad groups from the searches she's seeing in here.

When taking a quick glance at QueryStream I am able to identify several negatives for example "rental skis" was searched several times – even resulting from 5 clicks – which is a service GetOutfitted does not provide so this is likely wasting money, therefore Kristi will want to set this phrase as an account level negative keyword.

Keep in mind that it is also important make sure negatives are not blocking terms that could be beneficial to your account so make sure to review negative lists that are currently set up.

#4: Pause Keywords with Poor Performance 

How do you know if a keyword has poor performance?

First, make sure it's been running long enough to acquire enough data to make this decision. If a keyword has only been running for a few days I would suggest giving it some more time to accrue data rather than just pausing it right away.

Also, do your homework before pausing a keyword. Investigate to find out why the keyword is not performing well. Here are a few common scenarios I often see:

• The keyword's bid is not high enough. Take a look at the page #1 CPC and the top of page bid estimate to ensure your bids are competitive enough. In Kristi's ad group "Womens Ski Jackets" I noticed that she has about 12 keywords with bids set to only a penny for their max CPC; in this scenario if Kristi ups the bids she will likely gain a lot more traffic.
• The keyword has low search volume. If the keyword is not accruing much traffic even though you are bidding enough, the keyword may be too long-tailed or simply a phrase that users are not searching for. I would recommend pausing these keywords to de-clutter your account. It is also important to pause keywords that are getting lots of impressions, but very few or no clicks, as this will hurt your click-through rate and Quality Score. Kristi paused the keyword "ski" because it received over 7,000 impressions, but only 4 clicks, resulting in a .06% CTR. Likely the keyword was too general, and was therefore underperforming and hurting Kristi's account, so she was smart to pause the keyword.
• The match type is either too broad or too restrictive. If the volume is high, but the click-through-rate, conversions, etc. are super low on a broad keyword, then pause it and add the keyword with a more restrictive match type. In Kristi's account I noticed the keyword "ski clothing" on broad match has a really low click-through rate, so in this case I'd suggest pausing that keyword, and adding it on phrase match to increase the relevancy. If the keyword is on exact or phrase, but not getting much traffic, try adding it as modified broad or broad match to open it up to a larger volume.

#5: Optimize Ads & Create New Ad Text

If you are not continuously optimizing your ad text then you have a problem! Superior ad text is a crucial step in getting searchers to your site. If your ads are not compelling and relevant to your keywords, searchers aren't going to click on them, resulting in less traffic to your site.

You should regularly be testing and tweaking your ad copy to improve PPC performance. Are you having a Spring sale? Or offering a special discount or event? Include this in your ad text! If GetOutfitted decided to give an extra 50% off on clearance items during summer months, this should be made clear in the ad text.

Kristi's ads have great historical performance, with lots of impressions and high click-through-rates. Here are some tips you can take away from Kristi's ad copy:

She does a great job with relevancy.

For example in Kristi's ad group for rental clothes she is capturing leads to come to the homepage of her website and she does this by using keywords like "snow clothes rental," "rent ski apparel," "rent ski clothes" etc. Her keywords are all highly relevant to the ads she has written, which definitely plays a part in her high CTR's.

She uses ad variations.

In each ad group, I typically recommend running two ads for desktop and two ads for mobile simultaneously to test which ones are performing better. Kristi has done just that, and is able to easily compare performance between the ads. For example, Kristi saw that using "Free Shipping" in her ads led to some confusion, so she decided to tweak this ad text to improve performance. You can also try varying your headline, punctuation, and unique selling prop.

She has sitelink extensions enabled.

Sitelinks extend the presence of Kristi's ad copy allowing for a lot more clicks and traffic to her site. Her "How It Works" site link has generated over 49,000 impressions, 2,432 clicks with a click-through-rate of 4.9%.

Kristi's ad copy is simple, to the point, and includes a clear call to action.

For example, "Call To Reserve Your Gear." Every ad needs a clear CTA so the searchers know what the expected action to be taken is before even clicking on the ad.

What else can she do?

There is still room for improved performance within Kristi's ad text, including the following:

Kristi should add punctuation to the end of her line 1 description. What this does is when Kristi's ads appear at the top of the page on the search results, that punctuation mark tells Google to pull the first description line into the headline. This extends the presence of the ad and is proven to increase click-through rate.  

BEFORE

AFTER

Kristi should add a descriptive line to her display URL, for example: www.getoutfitted.com/RentSkiClothes

Think of the display URL as an opportunity to extend the description of your ad.

Kristi should change up the ad copy even more. In one ad group she is using "Rent Ski Apparel" in every headline, but she should try some variations like "Ski Clothing Rentals" or "Rent Quality Ski Clothes" and also experiment with some alternative calls-to-action like "Order Online For Doorstep Delivery" etc. or "Rent Online w/ Free Delivery Today." Testing more ad text can give a greater test sample, and could prove to be worth the work.

All in all, Kristi's done an awesome job at improving her AdWords account since first running the Grader and using WordStream's PPC Advisor, but as you can see in PPC there are always improvements that can be made to get even better performance out of your account.

If you haven't gotten your fill of Kristi's success story, check out this recent webinar:

PPC Impossible: 1 Person, 1 Month, 1200% Account Improvement

What are you doing to continuously optimize your AdWords PPC performance?

About the author:

Margot is a Customer Success Specialist at WordStream with a background in SEO, SEM, content and digital marketing. Follow her on:

Twitter: @ChappyMargot

Google+: +Margot da Cunha

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/margot-da-cunha/30/3a7/14b

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

You may view the latest post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WordStreamBlog/~3/AELhhgz-x8A/ppc-performance You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

[Build Backlinks Online] Everything You Need to Know About Nurturing Influencer Relations

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Everything You Need to Know About
Nurturing Influencer Relations'

Yesterday, I posted on a stellar event that Unclaimed Baggage put together to
appeal to local bloggers and earn some authentic coverage for their brand. If
you missed it, check it out here and then come back to this post and join me
discuss the value in nurturing the relationships with all of the people []



You may view the latest post at
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/62361653/0/convinceandconvert~Everything-You-Need-to-Know-About-Nurturing-Influencer-Relations/

You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

[Build Backlinks Online] Penguin Penalties: Do Webmasters Respond the Way They Should?

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Penguin Penalties: Do Webmasters
Respond the Way They Should?'

Posted by russvirante
Penalization has become a regular part of the search engine optimization
experience.Hell, it has changed the entire business model of Virante to building
tools and services around penalty recovery and not just optimization.While
penaltiesused to be a crude badge of honor worn by those leaning towards the
black-hat side of the SEO arts, it is now a regular occurrence that seems to
impact those with the best intentions. At Virante, we have learned a lot about
penalties over the last few yearsdiscerning between manual and algorithmic,
Panda and Penguin, recovery methodologies and risk mitigationbut not much study
has been done on the generalresponse of websites to penalizations. We have
focused more on what webmasters
ought to do without studying what webmasters actually do in response to various
penalties.
How webmasters respond matters
As much as we often feel a communion among other SEOs in our resistance to
Google, the reality is that we are engaged in a competitive industry where we
fight for customers in a very direct manner. This duality of competitionwith
Google and with each otherplays out in a very unique way when Google penalizes a
competitor. We learn a great deal in the following months about the competition,
such as the sophistication of their team (how quickly they respond, how many
links they remove, how quickly they recover), their financial strength (do they
increase ad spend, how much and on what terms), and whether they eventually
recover.
It is also important from a wider perspective of understanding Google's
justifications for particular types of penalties that seem sweeping and
inconsistent. Conspiracy theories abound regarding Penguin updates;I can't count
how many times I have heard someone say that penalties are placed to encourage
webmasters to switch to AdWords.
So, I decided to investigate the behavior of webmasters post-Penguin from a
macro perspective to determine what kinds of responses we are likely to see, and
perhaps even answer some questions about Google's motivations in the process.The
methodologyCollect examples: I collected a list of 100 domains that were
penalized by Penguin 2.0 last year and confirmed their penalization through
SEMRush. Establish controls: For each penalized site, I identified one website
that ranked in the top 10 for their primary keyword that was not penalized. Get
rankings and AdWords data: For each site (both penalized and control), we
grabbed their historical rankings and AdWords spend from SEMRush for the months
leading up to and following Penguin 2.0 Get historical link data: For each site
(both penalized and control), we grabbed their historical link data from
Majsetic SEO for the months leading up to and following Penguin 2.0. Analyze
results: Using simple regression models, we identified patterns among penalized
sites that differed significantly from the control sites.Do webmasters remove
bad links?
After a Penguin 2.0 update, it is imperative to identify and remove bad links
or, at minimum, disavow them. While we can't measure disavow data, we can
measure link acquisition data quite easily. So, do webmasters in general follow
the expectations of link removal following a penalty?
Aggressive link removal: It appears that aggressive link removal is a common
response to Penguin, as expected. However, we have to be careful with the
statistics to make sure wecorrectlyexamine the degree and frequency with which
link removal is employed. The control group on average increased their root
linking domains by 41 following Penguin 2.0, but that could best be explained by
a few larger sites increasing their links. When looking at an average of link
proportions, only about 22% of the control sites actually saw an increase in
links in the three months post-Penguin. The sites that were penalized saw a drop
of 578 root linking domains. However, once again, this statistic is impacted by
the link graph size of the individual penalized sites. 15% of those penalized
still saw an increase in links in the three months following Penguin.
So, approximately 22% of domains not impacted by Penguin 2.0 had more root
linking domains three months after the penalty, while only 15% of those
penalized had more root linking domains post-Penguin. Notice how small the
discrepancy is here. Webmasters responded differently only by 7% depending on
whether or not they were penalized. While certainly those penalized removed more
links, the practice of link building in general was very similarly affected.In
the three months following Penguin,78% of the control websiteseitherdropped
links or at least stopped link building and lost them through attribution. This
is remarkable. There appears to be a deadening effect related to Penguin that
impacts all sitesnot just those that are penalized. While many of us expected
Penguin to have a profound impact on link growth as webmasters respond to fears
of future penalties, it is still amazing to see it borne out in the numbers.

What I find more interesting is the variation in webmaster responses to Penguin
2.0. Some penalized webmasters actually doubleddown on link building, likely
attributing their rankings loss to having too few links, rather than being
penalized. We can tease this type of behavior out of the numbers by looking at
the variances in percentage link change over time.
The variance among link fluctuations for sites that were not penalized was .08,
but the variance among sites that were penalized was .38. This means that the
behavior of websites after being penalized was far more erratic than those that
were not. Some penalized sites made the poor decisions to greatly increase their
links, although more sites made the decision to greatly decrease their links. If
all webmasters responded uniformly to penalties, one would not expect to see
such an increase in variance.
As SEOs, we clearly have our work cut out for ourselves in teaching webmasters
thatthe appropriate response to a penalty is very much NOT adding more and more
links to your profile, because this behavior is actually more common than link
removal post-penalty. It is worth pointing out that it is possible that the
webmasters disavowed links rather than removing them. We do not have access to
that data, so we cannot be certain regarding that procedure. It is possible that
some webmasters chose to disavow while others removed, and that the net impact
on link value was identical, thus making the variance calculation false.Do
webmasters increase their ad spend?
I'll admit, I had my fingers crossed on this one. Honestly, who doesn't want to
show that Google is just penalizing webmasters because it helps their bottom
line? Wouldn't it be great to catch the search quality team not being honest
with us about their fiduciary independence?
Well, unfortunately it just doesn't bear out. The evidence is fairly clear that
there is no reason to believe that webmasters increase ad-spend following a
Penguin 2.0 penalty. Let's look at the numbers.

First, across our data set, no one who was an advertiser prior to Penguin 2.0
stopped advertising in AdWords in the three months after. Of the sites that were
not advertisers prior to Penguin 2.0, 10% of those not penalized ended up
becoming advertisers in AdWords, while only 4% of those penalized became
advertisers. Sites that weren't penalized were far more likely to join the
AdWords program than those that were.
It wasn't onlytrue that those unaffected by Penguin 2.0 were more likely to
sign up for AdWords; they increased their averageAd-spend,too. There was a 78%
greater increase in ad-spend by those unaffected by Penguin 2.0 than those who
were. Moreover, bidding shifts for those not impacted by Penguin remained
similar in two month intervals across multiple randomly selected three-month
differences, meaning that there appeared to be no related impact whatsoever.
We can safely conclude from this that there does not appear to be a direct,
causal relationship between Penguin penalties and increased AdWords spending.
Now, one could of course make the argument that better search results might
increase ad revenue in the future as Google attracts more users to a better
search engine, but accusations of a fiduciary motivation for releasing updates
like Penguin 2.0 cannot be substantiated with this data.Do they recover?
By the 5th month, approximately 24% of sites that were penalized were at or
above their pre-Penguin 2.0 traffic. This is an exciting outcome because it does
show recovery from Penguin is possible. Perhaps most important, sites that were
penalized and removed links on average recovered 28% more traffic in the five
months after Penguin than those that did not remove links. We have good evidence
to suggest at least a correlation between post-penalty link removaland traffic
recovery.Of course, we do have to take this with a grain of salt for a number of
reasons:Sites that removed links may have been more likely to use the disavow
tool as well. Sites that removed links may have been more SEO-savvy in general
and fixed on-site issues. Sites that did not remove links may have had more
intractable penalties, thus their lack of removal was a conscious decision
related to the futility of a removal campaign.
These types of alternate explanations should always be entertained when using
correlative statistics. What we do have good evidence of is that traffic
recovery is possible for sites hit by Penguin, although it is by no means
guaranteed or universal. Penguin 2.0 needn't be a death sentence.Takeaways
So, in a few weeks, we are likely to see another Penguin update, assuming
Google follows its late-spring release date.When Penguin hits, be readyeven if
you aren't going to be penalized. Here are some things you should be
doing...Know your bad links already. There is no reason to wait to be prepared
for removal or disavowal. While I personally think that preemptive disavowalis
likely the best practice, there is no excuse to just wait. Don't worry about
AdWords. There is no statistical evidence that your competition will surge
post-Penguin in any meaningful fashion. The competitors who might come to depend
moveon AdWords also have less organic revenue to invest in the first place. At
best, these even out. Don't double down. While we can't be certain that link
removal gets you out of penalties (it is merely correlated), we can be certain
that even a correlation doesn't exist for increasing links and earning recovery
post-Penguin penalties. Never assume. The behavior of your competitors and of
Google itself is far more complex than off-the-cuff assumptions like "Google
just penalizes sites to force people into AdWords" or that your business will
know intuitively to remove or disavow links post-Penguin.
Hopefully, this time around we will all be more prepared for the appropriate
response to Google's next big updatewhether we are hit or not.Sign up for The
Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of
SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your
exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

You may view the latest post at
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Build Backlinks Online
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[Build Backlinks Online] TITLE

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Gmail Shortcuts, Tips, and Tricks: Latest Secrets for Hacking Your Email'

If you're like me, you're checking Gmail constantly. Despite how much time you spend on Gmail, I bet that good old Google Mail is still holding out a few secrets on you! Well we're blowing its cover and showing you some of the most valuable Gmail tips and tricks to make your email checking a bit easier.

Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts

Did you know you can use a number of Gmail keyboard shortcuts from within Google Gmail? Some general Word shortcuts apply so that when you're composing messages, you can use Gmail shortcut keys like:

Ctrl + b | Make your text bold.

Ctrl + i | Make your text italicized.

Ctrl + u | Make your text underlined.

Ctrl + Shift + 7 | Create a numbered list.

Ctrl + Shift + 8 | Create a bulleted list.

Ctrl + k | Insert a hyperlink for highlighted text.

 (Note: For Gmail keyboard shortcuts with Mac, simply substitute Ctrl for ⌘)

Check out the full list of Gmail keyboard shortcuts.

More Gmail Shortcut Keys (Just Turn 'em On)

Not handy enough for ya? We've got more Gmail shortcut keys, but you need to switch them on manually first. Just hit the gear icon in the upper right corner and select settings. Head to "keyboard shortcuts," switch them on, then scroll down and hit "Save Changes" at the bottom.

c | Lets you compose a new message. Shift + c composes a message in a new window.

d | Compose a message in a new tab

f | Forward a message

e | Archive a message

# | Delete a message

/ | Do a Gmail email search

Shift + i | Mark as read

Shift + u | Mark as unread

Ctrl + s | Save draft

Gmail Email Search Strings

How awesome is that Gmail search bar? Sure, you can search keywords to filter through your massive collection of emails, but you can do a lot more with it than that.

Take full advantage of the search bar with these tips below. In the Gmail search bar, try typing in:

From: | Search all messages from a specific sender

To: | Search all messages sent to a specific recipient

OR | Search all messages with term A or B. OR must be in all caps.

In:anywhere | Search all messages anywhere in Gmail (including Trash and Spam which are normally excluded).

Is:starred | Search all starred messages

Is:unread | Search all unread messages

Has:Attachment | Search all messages with attachments. This search is great for clearing up space by finding and deleting messages with hefty file attachments.

After: | Search messages sent or received after a specific date

Before: | Search messages sent or received before a specific date. Combine before and after for further precision:

Older_than: / newer_than: | Similar to above, but instead of exact dates you can use days (d), months (m) or years (y).

There are tons more strings you can search using "in:" "is:" and "has:" – see them all.

Best Gmail Hacks: 15 Bonus Gmail Tips

1. Those Dots are Meaningless!

Believe it or not – veronica.mars@gmail.com is the same thing as ver.on.ica.mar.s@gmail.com OR veronicamars@gmail.com – all these address variations can be used for a single email address. Pretty awesome!

2. The Undo Button

 We've all wished life had an undo button – for those awkward responses that blurted out of your mouth, for that bus you could have caught if you had ran just a smidge faster, for that stray hand that knocked your coffee all over your keyboard. Well life has just been upgraded – turns out there is an undo button. Well, it's only for Gmail, but it's a start.

Activate the "Undo" button by clicking the Gear Icon in the upper right corner, going to Settings, and then heading over to the Labs tab. A few options down you'll see the ability to enable Gmail's undo button. There's a ton of other awesome stuff in GLabs, which we'll be exploring in some of our other Gmail hacks below.

You can choose your cancellation period – I do 30 secs as a wide safety net

3. Super Stars!

Most of you probably know about Google's yellow star that you can use to mark important emails. Don't stop there though – head over to settings and see the 12 different stars and symbols you can use to designate value in your Gmail inbox.

4. Density

Feeling a little claustrophobic in Google Mail? Here's a nice Gmail secret - change your Gmail's spacing by hitting that little ol' gear icon and changing the density. Choose what feels right for you!

Cozy as a cuddle by the fire in a log cabin. And it's snowing.

5. Canned Responses

When you're sending out the same e-mail a bunch of times, make it easy on yourself with canned responses. First, turn on the Canned Responses feature in Gmail Labs. Now just write your email and click the extra drop down bit on the bottom of your message, beside the trash can. Go to Canned Responses and click New Canned Response to name and save your canned response.

Now, next time you go to compose a new email, go to canned responses and you'll see the option to insert your saved canned response.

As you can see, I already have a canned response for apartment hunting, as I end up sending the same response (blurb about myself, what I'm looking for in an apartment, when I am available to stop by and see it) multiple times. Once a canned response in inserted, any personalization needed can be added to the template before sending it off.

The ability to create canned responses is a very cool Gmail secret that you probably won't use most days, but when you do need it, you'll be glad it's there.

6. Desktop Notifications

Gmail desktop notifications let you instantly know when you've received a new email via a pop-up. This sweet little feature is compatible with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, and can be activated under Settings > General.

7. Mute Conversations

Tired of watching your co-workers jabber on about things that don't apply to you? Not a problem with Google Gmail's ability to mute conversations.

With your conversation open, just go to More, and select Mute. Now that conversation won't pop back up to your attention unless a new message is addressed just to you, or if you're added to the To: or CC: fields.

8. Archiving Emails

Archiving emails is a great way to keep your Inbox clean without deleting emails, letting you appear a normal, healthy internet user while secretly hoarding a decade collection of old emails. It's the perfect tool for online spring cleaning!  

For example, my Gmail "social" tab is pretty flooded – it's mostly messages about Meetup groups I'm a part of, or upcoming events. I don't want to unsubscribe to these emails because there's a chance that someday I really will go to the Wednesday African Drum Circle at the MFA. However, I'm getting waaay too many emails from these sorts of things. Here's what I can do for a quick Gmail inbox clean up.

I'm going to use our search string from earlier to select all emails in my Social tab that are older than 6 days.

BONUS TIP: Clicking the Select All box (the one highlighted in pink below) only selects all the emails shown on that page. To select all emails that match your search, click the link that appears in the pop up (highlighted in blue).

Now that I have all the emails that match my search string selected, I can just hit the Archive button. Goodbye old emails! Ah, that feels better already.

9. Send + Archive: Goodbye Email Clutter

Send + Archive is the next step in super archiving power, letting you send an email and immediately archive it. This features needs to be turned on in the Settings menu before you can start using it.

Now when you reply to an email, you'll see the option to Send + Archive.

This means that the email will be archived away, out of your Inbox. You can rest easy knowing that if someone replies to your archived email, it will reappear in your Inbox, delivered to your attention.

10. How to Find Archived Emails

The easiest way to find emails once you've archived them is to use the search string All Mail:  . You can also use the search drop down.

11. Gmail Offline

Did you know that you can read and reply to emails, even when offline? The Gmail Offline Chrome app syncs messages and queues actions you've taken offline to implement later, when internet access is available. Now you can be productive anywhere!

12. Gmail Email Tasks

Say goodbye to scribbled to-do lists on Post It notes. Gmail has its own built-in task list! Just open or select and email, click More, and hit Add to Tasks.

You'll see your custom Gmail task list appear; from there you can add more tasks, add due dates, check off completed tasks, and more.

Start a task item with a date and the task will automatically be added to your Google Calendar (provided that you turn on the "task" calendar in the My Calendars section of Google Calendar. Gmail tasks is a great way to stay on top of daily to-dos.

13. Creating Custom Gmail Filters

Gmail filters can do a ton of email heavy lifting for you, if you'll let them. Start by creating a filter from an existing message. I've been doing some apartment hunting lately, and have been sending out a lot of emails through Craigslist. Keeping all those messages organized is important to me, so I'll make a filter for them.

First we'll select an email to base my filter off of. Then we can head over to More > Filter messages like these.

Now it's time to add the parameters of my filter. I'm going to keep this one simple – I'm going to create a filter for any emails that have the words "apartment" and "craigslist" in the subject line, since that's the subject line I've been using for my apartment hunting emails.

Now it's time to decide what action the filter will take. I'm going to have this filter add the label "Apartment Hunting" and star the email. And now we're in business!

(Note: to edit existing Filters, go to Settings > Filters tab)

Another great and easy way to set up filters is with custom email aliases. You can add any +word to your user name and still have those messages delivered to your regular address.

For example, when I sign up for H&M offers, I can use the email address veronicamarrs+HM@gmail.com, but all the messages will still be delivered to veronicamarrs@gmail.com. Why is this helpful? Now when I create a custom filter, I can create an action for all messages from the address alias. For example, I might create a filter that adds a Fashion label to all messages addressed to veronicamarrs+HM@gmail.com. And that's how to make a Gmail filter. It's pretty easy to do and can make a HUGE difference when it comes to keeping your email organized.

14. See Messages Meant JUST For You

Personal level indicators are arrows next to your messages that show whether an email was sent directly to you (>>) or you and other recipients (>). It's a nifty little Gmail trick you can activate in the Settings section (scroll about half way down the General tab).

15. Gmail Labels

Labels make it easy to keep your Gmail so fresh and so clean (clean, clean). Individual emails can have multiple labels – customize them with bright colors to keep track of what's what.

People are often confused about how to add folders to Gmail, but Gmail doesn't technically have folders. Instead, it has labels. Gmail labels can mark emails that live in your Inbox, and can also be used as folders. To move an email into a label folder, select or open an email and choose the Move To option to move the email into the label.

Extra Gmail Add-On Features

There are a lot of great applications that enable you to do some pretty remarkable stuff with Gmail. A few favorites include:

• Boomerang: Boomerang for Gmail lets you write and schedule emails to be sent at a later time or date. Boomerang can also set up email follow-up reminders for you, all built to be seamlessly compatible with Gmail.
• Rapportive: Rapportive is a great tool to help you instantly see all your contacts data right from within Gmail! You can see a user's LinkedIn account, Twitter info, Facebook, Skype, and more!

Those are our best Gmail tips and tricks. May you make the most of your fabulous Gmail email!

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

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[Build Backlinks Online] Starting Over, Part 2: Launch

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Starting Over, Part 2: Launch'

Posted by Dr-Pete
This post is a part of the "Starting Over" series, the story of starting a blog
(MinimalTalent.com) from scratch. See the end of the post for links to the rest
of the series.

Launching a new site is exciting, and it should be, but we sometimes let
excitement get the best of us. After months of building and planning, it's
understandable to want to finally pull the trigger, but launch is important and
rushing it can delay real success. This is the story of how I got Minimal Talent
off the ground.Goods news and bad news
Online marketing has evolved a lot in the past decade, and changes to search
and social have brought good news and bad news for webmasters. First, the good
news it's relatively easy to get a new site indexed in 2014, and even ranking
for long-tail terms. You don't have to wait for Google to discover you or pay a
search submission service (remember those?). Unfortunately, the bad news is that
ranking on real, competitive terms has gotten harder, and it takes longer. Why
am I telling you this up front? You need to have realistic expectations, or
launch will be an unpleasant and ultimately unproductive experience.Alerting the
bots
You can't win if you don't play if you want to eventually rank in search, you
need to get indexed. Inpart 1, we set up Google Webmaster Tools and created an
XML sitemap, which can be great for discovery. Next up is to submit your site.
Yes, submissions services may be [mostly] [hopefully] dead, but Google does
allow direct submission of new pages. Go to Webmaster Tools, select the "Crawl"
menu and click on "Fetch as Google" you'll see something like this:

To submit your home-page, just leave the field blank and click [FETCH]. Your
URL should show up at the bottom, and your "Fetch Status" should soon return
"Success". Once it does, just click [Submit to index]. There is a limit to how
many pages you can fetch, but typically I only use this to launch a site or
refresh a page that is outdated or isn't getting re-cached.
Within minutes, I was showing up for a "site:" search (site:minimaltalent.com),
with seven pages indexed (which was about right):

I promised this series would be transparent, so I have to admit that I messed
up a little here. Apparently, Google had managed to crawl the site prior to my
official launch, and had actually cached it a few days earlier (checked with
cache:minimaltalent.com).
For me, this was no big deal, but it bears warning that, if you don't want your
site to be out in the world prematurely, you may have to take steps to keep
Google from crawling. Google has a way of finding new sites, which can be good
and bad, depending on your plans.
Later on launch day, I was also ranking for my tagline ("Misadventures in
Minimalism"), on page 1 in the #2 position:

I'd highly encourage you to track a few non-competitive, long-tail phrases
(and, if you're a Mozcustomer, set them up in Moz Analytics). They may not seem
sexy, but you'll see progress much sooner than with competitive phrases. It's
important to know that your site at least has the ability to rank, in order to
detect any issues early.Link chickens & Search eggs
Which came first, the link chicken or the search egg? Ok, let me try again. If
you want to rank, you're going to need links, but you can't get natural links if
no one can find you to begin with. This is the fundamental problem of modern
search marketing.
Yes, you can manually build links (and there's a place for that, done well and
in moderation). Sometimes, though, we get so hung up on the mechanics of SEO
that we forget that there are plenty of other channels to get the word
out.Alerting the humans
In other words, it's time to tell people you launched. I'm not one to broadcast
every post I write to my friends, family, and tax guy, but launch is different
if you've created something you're excited about, then tell people. Who did I
email?Friends (IRL) Industry peers Co-workers Private mailing lists
In most cases, the email was customized to the list and even the individual.
These things are worth the effort. As a marketer, emailing my peers isn't just
about a few pageviews it's a way to seed social sharing and potentially even
drive links.
The other way around the chicken-and-egg problem is taking full advantage of
social. We tend to obsess about whether or not social signals (Tweets, Likes,
+1s) have a direct impact on ranking, and when we do that we miss two important
points. First, sharing equals visibility, regardless of what happens on Google.
Second, sharing can drive links, and better yet, those links are editorial, or
as we call them, "natural".
I shared the initial site and blog post on my main Twitter, Google+, and
Facebook accounts. Since this project naturally has a visual aspect (the parody
logos), it was well suited to Google+ and Facebook sharing, which tend to
benefit from strong visuals.
I've wanted to put some time into Pinterest, so I set up a new folder just for
the blog in my existing account, re-organized that account a bit, and then
pinned some of the logos from the first post. Again, this project is visual, so
Pinterest was a good fit.My social screw-up
Ironically, I did on Pinterest what I tell everyone not to do on social media.
I went to an account I rarely use and just started posting my own content. Since
I'm not active, and I'm not sharing anyone else's content most days, guess what
happened? That's right absolutely nothing. A social media account is not a
dumping ground for your crap. I failed to participate, and it's going to take
time to make up that lost ground. Luckily, I'm more active on other networks,
but give-and-take matters quite a bit.
You may be thinking that, because I have a strong existing network, success
with a new project on social is guaranteed. I wish it were that easy. A year or
so ago, I launched a personal project that soundly flopped. Part of that was in
my execution and commitment, but part of it was that the topic was a bit far
afield for my existing audience. One of my goals with Minimal Talent was to find
a topic that could tie minimalist design into something my existing audience was
already interested in in this case, branding. Be aware how your audiences
overlap (or don't).Monitoring results
It can be hard to wait for results to come in, and patience is not one of my
virtues. Luckily, Google gave us real-time analytics. While watching your
numbers in real-time is an exercise in vanity most days, it can be very useful
on launch day and during other big events. Are your social shares resonating?
Which networks (if you stagger them in time) were most effective? Is it worth
re-sharing on any particular network? Your real-time numbers can help make these
calls.
I'm happy to say that I could actually see the needle move on launch day:

Fourteen active visitors isn't going to make me rich, but it was definitely a
start. At least I could tell that my social shares were leading to actual
visits.
As the days went by, traffic from my launch and first post showed a pretty
normal pattern:

Opening day was solid, with 383 visits, there was a tiny bump a couple of days
later, and then little or nothing (the bigger bump on the right is the second
post and sharing). This is the reality of most launches sustainable traffic
comes later. For now, you're fighting for traffic post by post. If you expect
launch day to be a benchmark of your day-to-day activity, you'll be in for a
very rude awakening.
I especially liked Moz Analytics overview of my first week's traffic:

That's right: PLUS INFINITY AND BEYOND!
Finally, I set up
Fresh Web Explorer (available to Moz Pro subscribers) FWE lets you track fresh
mentions of your site and keywords. Unfortunately, my brand "Minimal Talent"
contains common words, and can trigger false alarms, but FWE also lets you track
things like root domains. Here's how I set that up:

You can use the "rd:" operator to find new links to a root domain. On the main
FWE screen, just click "Show search operators" to see a full list of options.
It felt good to be finally off the ground, and now I had the tools to start
measuring my progress. Next time how I handled initial SEO problems I
discovered and finally started ranking for more interesting terms.
Read the full series
Use the links below to explore the entire "Starting Over" series:Part 1
Pre-launch Part 2 LaunchSign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer
updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links
uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you
don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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[Build Backlinks Online] An Innovative Approach to Outreach Marketing from a Quirky Brand

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Outreach Marketing from a Quirky Brand'

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