Sage Lewis | SageRock Digital Marketing Blog

May 3, 2012 By Sage Lewis 1 Comment

AdWords Ad Rotation Changes Update From Greg

Please take a minute to read Greg’s article over at Search Engine Watch on the Google AdWords Ad Rotation changes.

These are surprisingly significant changes that will likely make your life more difficult.

Google would rather you not know about these changes at all. It will just mean more money for them. But don’t fall for that trap. You aren’t doing Google AdWords to help Google. You’re doing Google AdWords to help you.

Go here to read Greg’s article on AdWords Ad Rotation changes.

It’s the best article on the topic out there.

Oh! And don’t forget the SageRock Google Analytics Event Tracking URL Builder. I used it to track how many people click on that link. You could do the same thing easily using that tool.

Greg is SageRock’s Chief Operating Officer and is awesome.

Filed Under: Featured, Paid Search

May 2, 2012 By Sage Lewis 1 Comment

Key Phrases Related to Airports

This entry is part 14 of 17 in the series Airport Marketing Series

So, making sure you come up for your airport name and when someone is searching for airports that reside near you is very important.

But you should also be aware that there are a ton of phrases that people are searching on that maybe you haven’t thought of.

I’ve been doing some general key phrase research on airports and the phrases people search on when thinking about airports.

What I can tell you is this: there is almost an endless array of phrases and there is a surprising amount of traffic.

I also have some demographic data for you.

First, based on the Microsoft Ad Intelligence tool here is what I found out about people who search the word “airport”:

Percentage of searchers by age:

13-17 = 2.73%
18-24 = 16.01%
25-34 = 26.01%
35-49 = 28.56%
50-64 = 16.82%
65+ = 9.41%

Percentage of searchers by gender:

Female: 51.17%
Male: 48.83%

These numbers don’t surprise me. Nor do they suggest you might be able to target in particularly unique ways based on age or gender. But, just the same, it’s good information to have.

I have hundreds of related airport phrases. But here are the top 50 most searched phrases having to do with airports:

airport
airlines at
flight and
flights to the
in air flights
airports
or airports
heathrow to
airlines that fly to
parking in the airport
parking at airport
parking for airport
parking at the airport
airport parking airport
about airport parking
airport parking at
airport parking
parking airport
parking in airport
on airport parking
airport hotel
airport hotels
international air
airport shuttle
airport transportation
airport car parking
air port parking
airport transfer
airport car park
airlines flying to
airport car rental
airport code
airport codes
airport transfers
airport car hire
city airport
airport transport
airport extreme
airport taxi
taxi to airport
taxi airport
airport car rentals
where is heathrow airport
to heathrow airport
airport flight
air port transportation
cargo by air
airport jobs
newark airport
airport flights

These phrases could be very useful to you. Simply add your city or airport name to the phrase and there you go: a phrase you could easily optimize for that is generating traffic.

I like this phrase: “heathrow to”

If Heathrow flies into your aiport you would definitely want to consider having a page on your site talking all about that.

I also like: “airlines that fly to”.

This also could be interesting. “We have airlines that fly to Las Vegas.”

By understanding the phrases people are searching on you can develop an entire content strategy around these topics.

Next up: I want to start looking at how some airports might be using paid search to gather traffic. There are cool tools out there that let me spy on all your paid search behavior

So that should be fun.

Filed Under: Featured

May 1, 2012 By Sage Lewis 1 Comment

Airport Key Phrase Research – Where to begin

This entry is part 15 of 17 in the series Airport Marketing Series

You are in one of those tricky industries.

Some people have very clear key phrases they want to come up for:

cleveland hvac
baltimore real estate
atlanta plumber

But airports are different… to an extent.

Yes: you need to come up for your primary city name + airport:

cleveland airport
baltimore airport
atlanta airport

If you are not coming up for your primary city plus the word airport please fix that!

I suspect that’s not your major issue. The issue you are going to have are phrases people are searching on that are related to your airport.

First, though, let’s look at what happens when I type in the word airport. Here is what my results look like when I’m logged into Google:

Now here is a search result where I’m logged out of Google and I’ve hidden my location:

Poor Google is just confused. It doesn’t know who I am and therefore doesn’t know what to serve me.

The point of this is that search results are going to vary wildly based on where a person is searching from and previous searches they have done.

You aren’t going to be able to easily spot check your results simply by typing a word or phrase into Google. The best way of monitoring this is by using Google’s Webmaster Tools. You will want to make sure you have verified your site in there. The query results data within there is going to give you your most accurate information on how often your site appears in the search results for a phrase and then how much traffic you are getting for that phrase.

There are a few things you should be aware of here:

First: Seriously consider buying the word “airport” in Google AdWords. Then geo-target where you want to serve it based on your service area. In the event someone types in the very general word “airport” you want to be sure you are there.

Second: Did you see all the Google+ results when I was logged in? Even if people are not going to Google+ to hang out, they will see the results in the search results. I would highly encourage you to have a Google+ page and then try to get your audience to add you to their circles.

Third: Local listings take up a lot of real estate. Make sure that you have verified your Google local listings page and that it’s built out with pictures and videos. I would also encourage you to get people to review you on your Google local listing. These elements all play an important part of having your local listing appear in search results. Also, by verifying your listing you will be able to see how much traffic is coming to you through Google local.

These are the very first things I would do to make sure your search engine optimization is on the right track.

Next time we are going to look at phrases you might not have considered to optimize for.

Filed Under: Featured

April 30, 2012 By Sage Lewis 6 Comments

Digging Into U.S. Airport SEO

This entry is part 13 of 17 in the series Airport Marketing Series

In the next phases of Airport Marketing Month here at the SageRock blog, I want to take a look at how the airports are doing from a search engine optimization standpoint.

One key to analyzing SEO ranking factors is to be sure you are comparing apples to apples. There is no point in comparing a car manufacturer with an airport. They are in completely different parts of the search world. So the fact that GM has over 18,000 links according to SEMrush is of no concern to an airport. Looking at what other airports are doing is going to be more important to you.

There are four primary numbers I like to look at when doing a quick once over on the SEO health of the U.S. airport Web site:

Pages Indexed in Google – this is simply how many pages Google knows about from your Web site.
Links to your domain – Our industry is now primarily using SEMrush to determine this for sites we don’t control.
Google PageRank – this is a number Google assigns to each page of your site on a scale of 0-10. The quality and quantity of sites linking to you is key here.
Age of your domain – When you bought your domain is something that can’t be manipulated. Older domains are better.

Together these numbers tell a story of how healthy a Web site is online in comparison to its peers.

Now, I have all this data (and more) for each of the top 100 U.S. airports. But a huge spreadsheet of numbers is not the most compelling content in the world. So, I thought I’d give you some highlights. However, if you want your data just let me know on the contact page.

U.S. Airport PageRank

This is a number that gets everybody in a tizzy. Over time it has become less and less important. Some SEO professionals don’t even look at it any more. But I like to take it into account, at least a little.

Most sites I see these days have a PageRank somewhere around 3, 4, or 5.

What made this research interesting was that the PageRank spread for the airports was 4, 5, 6, and 7. You all seem to skew higher than average. This was cool to see. But it makes sense. You are all the leading airports in the U.S. You play an important part in our society. So, having a higher overall PageRank makes sense.

Here was how it broke down:

Total top 100 U.S. airport home pages with a PageRank of 7 = 15

Total top 100 U.S. airport home pages with a PageRank of 6 = 31

Total top 100 U.S. airport home pages with a PageRank of 5 = 52

Total top 100 U.S. airport home pages with a PageRank of 4 = 2

This is really great news in my eyes! You all are on the board and within a nice, tight pattern.

I was curious if I was going to see any airport that was way out of line from the rest of them. Like maybe an airport was going to have a PageRank of 1. Fortunately, that didn’t happen.

As for the 2 airports that have a PageRank of 4, don’t sweat it. You are still within a nice, acceptable level.

The secret to a higher PageRank is to get an industry-related site with a higher PageRank to link to you. If you could just get one of those PR 7 airports to link to you you’d be in the middle of the pack in no time

Pages Indexed In Google

This number tells you how much content you have on your site. We often say, “content is king” in the search engine optimization world. Sites with more content typically get more links pointing to them which in turn increases their PageRank so they become more powerful. A more powerful site can rank for a greater variety of key phrases.

Here the spread was diverse. One airport has 1,430,000 pages indexed in Google. Another airport has 7 pages indexed in Google.

If you are on the low end of total number of pages indexed in Google I would highly encourage you to have more pages. More pages will help you come up for more phrases in the search engines. And you are also being a better resource for your customers.

Setting up a blog on your site is a super easy way to create more content. The content can be about a wide variety of topics:

Airlines that fly into your airport.
Restaurants in your airport.
Shops in your airport.
Things you might not know about your airport.
The sky’s the limit (haha). That would actually be a cool name for an airport blog.

I want to specifically point out the four Hawaii airports:

http://hawaii.gov/hnl
http://hawaii.gov/koa
http://hawaii.gov/lih
http://hawaii.gov/ogg

The more I think about it, the more I really like the fact that they have built their airport Web sites on the main Hawaii.gov domain. The reason this is great is because the entire government site is able share all the value of all government content and links.

There are 878,000 pages in the hawaii.gov doman. This makes the entire site really powerful. They also have 25,875 links pointing to their domain… the airports with the most amount of links of all airports.

I don’t want you all to run out and change what you have done. But I just want to point out that it’s a very cool benefit from a search engine perspective.

Which brings me to:

Links to the domain

There is a long, weird history on how we track links to a site. I won’t get into it now. But what you should know is that I’m using SEMrush to track links here. The actual total number of links pointing to the domain is probably much higher. But that doesn’t really matter. The key here is that this number is relative to the other airports.

The range of links to the domain are: 25,875 to 39.

Again, we have a wide swing here.

What is important to know here is this: quality links that make sense linking to you are important. You should constantly be thinking about who could link to you. If a local newspaper does a story on you please make sure they include a link back to your site in the online version of the story.

All links are now useful to you in more ways than one. This includes links from places like:

Industry trade sites.
Industry blogs.
Industry discussion forums.
Local sites with authority. Newspapers, local bloggers, etc.
Facebook pages.
Twitter
Google+

You want links from a variety of places.

Getting links is hard. But do you want the secret? Here it is:

HAVE GREAT CONTENT!

That is the key to getting people to link to you.

Don’t forget to ask for the link. People often times forget to link to you even though they happily would.

You should also realize that the Web is becoming socialized. What that means is that people are going to find new products and services based on what their friends are doing. You need to understand that your current customers are your new marketing team. Love them and they will love you back.

I’ve seen time and time again where people post on an airport Facebook wall how much they love an airport. That kind of love is crucial for 21st century marketing.

You absolutely need people to be talking about you online.

Domain name age

There is nothing you can do about this. But older domains typically do better in the search engines than newer domains.

http://www.flyokc.com/ and http://www.flyoakland.com/ were both bought on November 4, 1996.

They are the winners of the oldest U.S. airport domain names. Those are gold. You’ll never want to get rid of those.

So those are the overarching aspects to search engine optimization. They are the key elements you want to be thinking about as you continue to expand your presence online.

In the next segment we’re going to be talking about airport key phrase research. I’ve already started looking at that. It’s pretty interesting what I’ve found.

See you next time!

Filed Under: Featured

April 26, 2012 By Sage Lewis 1 Comment

Get out!

I just had a tea at an independent coffee shop while I was waiting for my bus.

The people working were very nice. But everything else was a series of roadblocks.

$5 minimum for a credit card purchase.

You had to ask for a key to get in the restroom.

Every table had an upright sign that said the tables were for paying guests only. It also said there was a 30 minute maximum stay at a table.

One sign had 30 crossed out and 20 was written above it.

I was there at 7:30 am. 2/3′s of the tables were empty. Not surprising.

The message was clear: You people are annoying the shit out of us.

When you get to that point in your business you have two options:

1. Get someone else to manage the store. Maybe you’ll enjoy working with employees more than customers.

2. Get a new line of work.

Dunkin’ Donuts next door was packed. There were no signs on their tables telling me anything other than to get some coffee and a donut. They gladly swiped my card for $2.20 (just like Starbucks does).

When you are an independent store going up against a national brand the only chance in hell you have of winning is being better than them.

Being worse is pointless.

Filed Under: Small Business

April 26, 2012 By Sage Lewis 2 Comments

Why do we do it?

A person I know in business died from a heart attack.

He sold his business, was getting ready to retire to Florida. And died.

I don’t know how old he was. But truly not old enough.

That was shocking enough news when I heard it a couple weeks ago. But what was even more shocking to me was that it happened two years ago.

I wouldn’t have called him a friend. But he was someone in business that I always admired.

He gave me one of the two pieces of business advice I say to myself over and over: “Sage, don’t do. Think!”

So that’s why I haven’t seen him at the industry shows recently.

This is all so fucked up to me.

He really was looking forward to selling and getting out. He talked to me about it on several occasions.

If he had known that was the day he was going to die would he have made different decisions with his life?

And how is it that I didn’t even know he was dead?

Money never spent. Achievement never recognized (at least by me).

I am on my way home from speaking at a conference in Chicago. I am now really into Airbnb. (Actually, now I’m on deck for another speaking event later today.)

I rented a room from an artist who has live/work space in this massive 3 story artist gallery.

There is art everywhere. The halls, the elevator, room upon room of art. The bathroom graffiti is even clever and beautiful.

Without a doubt, being an artist is a pain in the ass. Shows, fairs, old rich people judging something they never could fully understand.

But at least the effort is going all into something they love and believe in. You can’t be an artist without love and belief in your work.

But then there’s us. The grinders. The people grinding out endless hours in business. Grinding our souls and hearts to the nub.

Is it worth it?

Do you ever ask yourself that? Is it worth it? Really: Why are we doing this?

Rocky refers to me as the minister of new media. I do love it. I believe it is the greatest evolution in communication in the history of humanity. I feel truly lucky and honored to be able to share my thoughts on it all.

But is there something I might love more? Or is there a way of doing the work in a more contributing way? Those are the questions for my bus ride back home.

But I believe this: the retirement, the cash out, the Florida escape. That’s too great a risk. If that’s the only reason we’re doing it. I believe we created our own hell on earth.

Filed Under: Life

April 25, 2012 By Sage Lewis 1 Comment

A Note To Airports Who Don’t Have Twitter Accounts

This entry is part 12 of 17 in the series Airport Marketing Series

I definitely can understand why you don’t have a Twitter account for your airport.

I talk to a LOTof companies about social media. Common concerns are:

Who is going to have the time to update it?
What are the legal ramifications of talking about operations publicly?
What if people start saying mean, nasty things?
What if it becomes flooded with comments and we can’t keep up with it?
What good is it really going to do us anyway?
Isn’t this something just kids are doing?
We’re on Facebook. That’s good enough.

Usually people that aren’t doing some major part of social media will have one or more of these concerns.

I often like to compare social media to the phone. You could apply almost all of those statements to the phone. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if people said those very things about the phone when it came out. (I say these things about the phone to myself all the time.)

Imagine this scenario: A start-up airport comes to you and says: “We’re ready to open the first of next month. Everything is set up. But we decided we aren’t ready to install phones yet. A phone is a big commitment. We just don’t have the people power for it.”

What would you say to that person? In a kind way you might say, “Do you think that’s a good idea? People often times need to call into the airport for lost luggage, parking questions, rental car information. Things like that.”

“We’ve thought about that. But what if people start calling all the time? What if they start asking questions. Who is going to be responsible for answering them?”

You might still continue on the kind, considerate conversation. But deep down, wouldn’t you be thinking: “Deal with it!”

This is where we are with Twitter.

You can no longer run an airport (or any business) without a Twitter account.

The media will use your Twitter account for monitoring updates, emergencies and press releases.
Your passengers will use it for delays, deals and cancellations.
You will communicate easily with other airports.

Twitter is beautiful because it requires being succinct. Brevity and getting to the point is more important than punctuation, spelling and niceties. It is pure information.

Twitter is also incredibly convenient. No matter what kind of device you have you can tweet. This includes non-smart phone devices. If you can text you can get a message out.

You don’t have to start with some giant, ambitious Twitter plan.

Just get a Twitter account and send out notifications of things you think the world would like to know about. Link to press releases you posted. Link to events you are having.

Just do it. The world wants you to.

If you have any questions on setting this up feel free to contact me, post a comment below, or hit me up on Twitter: http://twitter.com/sagerock

Filed Under: Featured, Social Media

April 24, 2012 By Sage Lewis 4 Comments

Top 10 U.S. Airport Twitter Accounts

This entry is part 11 of 17 in the series Airport Marketing Series

Looking at top anything in social media based on sheer number of followers is not perfect. You can artificially inflate followers without much difficulty.

That said, I have no reason to believe the airports are doing that. Everything looks pretty organic and natural.

Looking at the social media accounts of the airports is fascinating. Being the biggest in passenger count doesn’t necessarily mean you will also be the biggest in social media. We saw that with the top 10 airport Facebook pages.

There are some cool surprises in the Twitter realm as well. Only 6 of the top 10 Twitter accounts are also in the top 10 passenger counts based on Airports Council International 2010 traffic reports.

The really cool surprise to me is Richmond International Airport Twitter. They are ranked the #74 busiest airport based on ACI numbers. But they are the #4 busiest U.S. airport Twitter account. That is extremely cool!

San Diego International Airport’s Twitter account comes in at #9. That’s actually spot on with their ACI passenger ranking in 2010. But they have the highest PeerIndex.com ranking: 59. No one else in the top 10 have a ranking in the 50′s.

San Francisco International Airport has the highest PeerIndex.com ranking of 62. They are 1 spot away from the top 1o. They currently come in at #11.

PeerIndex is one of these ranking sites (like Klout) that tries to measure quality of a social media presence. They say:

We believe web authority is established when individuals participate in meaningful exchanges of information online.

These kinds of sites are all subjective. But the more numbers you have the more conclusions you can make.

I’m only counting the The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s official Twitter feed with one top 10 spot. They come in at #7. However, they tweet for: JFK, EWR, LGA, SWF.

So, without any further ado, here are the top 10 U.S. Airport Twitter accounts based on Followers. I’ve also included their ACI passenger ranking, PeerIndex score, total number of tweets and how many people they are following.

Top 10 U.S. Airport Twitter Accounts	Followers April 12, 2012	Total Passenger Ranking by ACI	PeerIndex.com Score	# of Tweets April 12, 2012	Following April 12, 2012
Los Angeles International Airport	12,522	3	34	1859	33
Logan International Airport	11,193	20	25	2867	1371
Richmond International Airport	10,543	74	37	6997	9947
Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport	7,707	1	42	2788	519
Kansas City International Airport	7,451	36	45	8063	3453
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey	7,100	6	33	1932	715
Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport	6,490	10	31	1168	1042
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport	6,435	4	44	3633	427
San Diego International Airport	6,114	9	59	772	122
Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport	6,086	24	21	11089	52

Filed Under: Featured

April 23, 2012 By Sage Lewis 2 Comments

Speaking Palooza Week

Clayde Lewis liked this post

Sage Lewis in the Akron-Canton Airport Flickr Photostream

Me in the Akron-Canton Airport Flickr Photostream at the 2011 AAAE Airport Social Media Summit

This week is a crazy speaking week for me.

I’m going to be all over the place talking about a variety of different topics. I thought I’d list the events that I have going on this week and if you are in the vicinity maybe you can stop by.

Tonight I’m going to be doing a WordPress workshop at the Hudson Library in Hudson Ohio. This from 7 to 9 tonight. It’s a two-part workshop. Part one is tonight and part 2 is next Monday.

We’ll be building WordPress websites from the ground up throughout the 2 nights. While the library has wireless Internet, I can’t be sure everybody will be able to get on. There are currently over 70 people scheduled for the event. I’m not sure the library WiFi can handle that many people. But, based on what we talk about tonight, you should be able to go home and implement those components. Then next week we’ll take questions and continue moving along all of the really cool WordPress aspects.

This is a free event. I’m not sure if it’s sold out yet or not but you can certainly try to get in if you want to come.

Then on Wednesday I am speaking with the Online Marketing Institute in Chicago. I am doing 2 two-hour sessions in Chicago. The 1st session is going to be advanced Google Analytics. We’re going to be talking about advanced segmentation, multi-funnel goal tracking, event tracking and stuff like that. I’m excited about that session because I be able to show off our new SageRock Google Analytics event tracking URL builder.

The 2nd session is on avoiding social media stall out. This is a very common issue for people. We’ll be talking about tools and techniques to help you continue to push on in all your social media pursuits.

Then I’m running back to Ohio and doing the Social Media Stall out session again for the Online Marketing Institute in Cleveland.

I have a 15% discount code for all Online Marketing Institute events. Just put in: SLEWIS15 in the checkout process. OMI events are world-class and also quite affordable. If you can make it to any of them I’d highly encourage you to do so.

So I’m out and about this week and part of next. Hopefully we’ll see each other.

Filed Under: Featured, SageRock