Tribal’s Birthday party

// December 2nd, 2009 // 3 Comments » // fun, work

Wie jarig is trakteert! from Tribal Internet Group on Vimeo.

Me and My Colleagues

// October 23rd, 2009 // No Comments » // work

The special occasion was the celebration of our company being in business for a decade! Read more about 10 years of Tribal on the website (Dutch only).

We are still number 1 for “search engine marketing” in the Netherlands

// September 4th, 2009 // No Comments » // fun, work

As most people know, I work for Tribal Internet Marketing in Dublin. The focus of our Irish office is Search Engine Marketing, we do a lot off Pay Per Click advertising but also some Search Engine Optimization. I spend most of my time looking at the Irish and UK markets these days, but this afternoon I was checking some of our Dutch competitors to see what has changed for them in the past few months.

One of our competitors launched a new website and I immediately noticed the screenshot from Google on their homepage. The screenshot shows that they are number 1 in the organic results for the keyword “zoekmachine marketing” (dutch for “search engine marketing”). At first I was shocked because we had that position for a long time, it looked like they did a better job then us. The screenshot:

After taking a closer look at the screenshot I realized that there are a few things wrong with it:

• There are no Adwords ads showing up, highly suspicious for a popular keyword like this one.
• The page title says “search engine marketing” and not the keyword they used “zoekmachine marketing”.
• Their brand name shows up bold and Google only does this for the keyword they used in the query.

The only conclusion I can make from these facts is that they used Photoshop (or a similar program) to make it look like they are number one for this important keyword (especially if you are in this business). I think they used a screenshot from a search on their brandname to make sure they would be number 1. Is this misleading for their (potential) clients or not?

A quick search in google confirmes that we still have the number 1 position in the Netherlands for what we do best, search engine marketing!

Paying more for AdWords then ever before

// August 12th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // work

Google changed their AdWords advertising program about two months ago with a new functionality called “extended broad match”. I was warned by several people that this would give me not-relevant clicks and views. I changed a few of my campaigns by including negatives and changing keywords to phrase and exact match, but I left some running as they where. I’ve been analyzing the data today and see a spending increase of up to 50% for some of the accounts… and guess what, the average conversion ratio dropped. My conclusion is that Google users get less relevant ads. Isn’t this something that contradicts with their policy and philosophy?

I’m now updating all my campaigns by adding negative keywords, changing broad to phrase/exact and changing the bids. If you have the same problem (speak Dutch) and are looking for more possible solutions, read “probleem van extended broad match (en 7 oplossingen)” on the TIM blog.

Twitter background PSD file

// June 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // work

I’ve been playing arround with Twitter today to create a background for my profile. You can see the result on my profile. You can download the PSD file here if you want to make your own design but need some help to get started. Below you see a snapshot of the image.