StepForth SEO News Blog

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Labels: Google, PPC, Tim Rule, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: This Week at Google

Friday, October 24, 2008

Labels: Google, PPC, Tim Rule

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Google Separates Search Stats

Thursday, September 11, 2008

-----Original Message-----

From: Google AdWords [mailto:adwords-noreply@google.com]
Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2008 4:49 PM

To: xxxxxxxxxxx

Subject: Google AdWords Account Verification Email

Dear Google AdWords customer!

In order to confirm your contact details, please click the link below:

Google AdWords Form

This should take you directly to the Google AdWords Form.

Thank you for choosing AdWords. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team
------------------------

1. 1. Google will NEVER ask for your account information by email; they won't even ask for your password on the phone. All they ever ask for whenever I phone them is the 10 digit account number. They don't need any other information to open up the account for viewing. Most legitimate enterprises don't need your login details, so if someone requests them, be very cautious.
   
   
2. If you receive notification about something you didn't initiate, likely this is about something not to your benefit. i.e.: receiving a confirmation of a password change when you didn't change your password, etc.
   
   
3. Always use security solutions and keep them up to date. Virus protection, firewall and spyware protection are vital for any system that connects to the internet.
   
   
4. Use strong passwords. Weak passwords, while easy to remember, are also very easy for password cracking programs. A strong password contains both alphabetical and numeric characters and utilizes capitalization, length and special characters. As well, stronger passwords don't use recognizable or easy to guess words.
   
   Examples: lame password = your name, password (the actual word) or 123456; weak password = date of birth, newgirl22, ItsaSecret, p@$$word; strong password = tP%m34!pX
   
   
5. Use different passwords. If you use the same password because it's easier to remember, then everything you do becomes compromised if any forums or sites you use become breached. I have hundreds of logins and passwords, so I use RoboForm to securely store them. This type of program can also reduce vulnerability to keylogger type spyware.
   
   
6. Keep the number of account users with administrative access to the minimum necessary. The more people who have access, the greater the chance of an information leak.
   
   
7. Turning your computer off or disconnecting from the internet when you are done using it greatly reduces the chance of bad things happening unnoticed.
   
   
8. Don't send login or password information by insecure means such as email or instant messaging. Generally if I have to pass on that sort of info, I always do it by phone.
   
   
9. Monitor your account regularly; particularly at the end of the week and take random peeks on the weekends. It only takes a minute to log on and check for abnormal account activity.

Labels: Google, PPC, Tim Rule

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Protecting Your Google AdWords Account from Fraud

Monday, July 14, 2008

Labels: MSN, PPC, Tim Rule

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Microsoft adCenter picks up the pace

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Labels: Google, PPC, Tim Rule

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Increasing Conversions with AdWords Demographics

Monday, June 30, 2008

Labels: Google, PPC, Tim Rule

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Google AdWords PPA?

Monday, June 23, 2008

Labels: Google, PPC, Tim Rule, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Yahoogle?

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Yahoo signed a multi-year deal with Walmart to start displaying advertising on its company website a press release stated Wednesday. The deal will enable Walmart.com to utilize Yahoo's ad platform for presenting new offers to their customers.

"This announcement builds on our strategy to be the partner of choice for leading brands looking to engage more customers with compelling offers online," said Todd Teresi, senior vice president of the Yahoo! Publisher Network. "By combining Walmart.com's leading position as a multi-channel retailer with our industry-leading display advertising sales and ad management technology and sales force, we will be able to provide advertisers with the easiest, most effective way to deliver targeted, relevant marketing messages to Walmart.com shoppers."

Marketers are expected to be able to start taking advantage of this partnership sometime near the end of this month.

Labels: PPC, Scott Van Achte, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Yahoo and Walmart Strike a Deal

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Labels: Google, PPC, Scott Van Achte

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Louis Vuitton takes Google to Court

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

For a few years now Google has offered their AdWords advertisers an alternative to the online interface with AdWords Editor, a downloadable program offering additional functionality to make managing your campaigns just a little bit easier. Today at SMX Advanced, Kevin Johnson, Microsoft’s Platform & Services Division President, announced the launch of a similar such product for Microsoft adCenter, in Beta of course.

Microsoft’s vision is a fully functional desktop client version for adCenter, rather than just an editor. This means that tools such as those used for keyword research will be integrated into the software, a feature lacking by Google AdWords Editor.

This product launch will likely make many advertisers happy assuming it all goes smoothly. Our experience with adCenter is that of awkwardness as their interface is far from user friendly, taking several steps to complete a task done with only a single click over at Google.

Unlike many other beta launches that are accessible to only a select few deep pocket advertisers, adCenter Desktop beta is available to anyone with an account in good standing. If you meet the adCenter terms and conditions, you are eligible to apply. If interested in giving the beta a try, fill in their application form to be considered.

Labels: Microsoft, MSN, PPC, Scott Van Achte

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Microsoft adCenter Desktop Beta

Thursday, May 22, 2008

• You can jump from account to account using the top client list drop down or via the more detailed dashboard list.

• It allows for a wide variety of customizable reports for any or all client accounts, including scheduling, creation of templates and emailing.

• You can easily view alerts from any linked accounts.

• You can create customizable templates for keyword or site targeted campaigns that can be used from any linked account. I find this extremely useful, as my initial setup for a lot of new campaigns is very similar and this saves time getting a basic structure up.

• If you are AdWords Certified, the Pro Center tab allows access to your status page, access to various marketing tools as well as a link to your Promotional credits, which can be applied to any linked accounts, within the first 2 weeks of account creation.

• Only one AdWords account can be linked to a specific Analytics account. If you are working from within the MCC shell account, log out and login into the client account you wish to link. If you have 2 separate AdWords accounts, for best results, make a separate Google Analytics account for each, not just 2 different site profiles in one Analytics account.

• Ensure you enable auto-tagging for the most accurate results.

• For ease of disseminating PPC data, create a separate profile within your Analytics account specifically for AdWords information only.

• Remember to correctly install the tracking code snippet on all pages of your site for the best possible coverage.

• If this is set up incorrectly, you will need to make a request to Google support to have the account unlinked.

• Marginally annoying is the use of 2 separate fields for each Ad description line in the Ad creation process. Trying to fit in a useful description into 2 separate fields with a maximum of 35 characters in each can be awkward. In Yahoo and MSN you just plunk in the complete description and it will auto fit, unless you have too many characters of course. Still it is easier to adjust one big description than the 2 separate lines.

• I’m not particularly impressed by the information displayed when looking up keyword status and quality score. Some of the explanations range from poorly worded and confusing to absolutely useless:

• I have had issues at times where very similar keywords in the ad group for the same amount of time, at the same max bid and similar levels of competition have 2 different quality scores. This in and of itself should not be unusual, however the more relevant keyword receives the lower score. In these instances the lower scoring keyword is what I would consider more relevant as it is the exact keyword used in both the ad and on the landing page. While close but not exact, the higher scoring keyword receives an ok score, even though it is not in the ad or on the landing page as such. This makes me question sometimes how relevant relevancy is :)
  

• AdWords seems to have a built in governor, designed to not display ads if keyword bids are high and the daily budget is insufficient to sustain more than a few clicks. I was running a campaign with a particularly competitive keyword set and was getting little to no impressions. My colleague suggested that perhaps the budget was a problem, so I tested this by increasing the daily budget by a factor of 10. Almost immediately the number of impressions increased to the point that there was no doubt this was what had been blocking ad display.
  
  If the budget is too low for more than a few clicks, Google should not arbitrarily decide to not show ads. Instead, the ads should be displayed until the budget is depleted, at which time ad display should cease. I would have thought this an anomaly; except that it happened on two separate accounts we were running for the same client.
  

• Another thing that seems an unnecessary restriction, is limiting the use of the same keywords within the same account. Recently, we queried Google support about using the same keyword set for a client that has the same services, but in different and specific geographic locations. We were told, regardless of the difference in geo targeting we could not use the same keywords in the same account. This seems ridiculous to me. I had a client wanting to advertise a franchise in a number of different cities.
  
  In this case it would make sense to use the same set of keywords, but with a separate campaign for each location, so ad copy could be tailored specifically to the area. I cannot see a disadvantage to searchers for allowing this. I can see, however, additional cost to the client if this is not allowed, both in the relatively minor fees for setting up additional accounts and in the amount of time it takes to set up and monitor these accounts.
  

Labels: Analytics, Google, PPC, Tim Rule

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: PPC Management - A User's Review of Google AdWords

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Labels: Algo, Google, PPC, Ross Dunn

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Google's Ad Quality Score Leaked

Monday, April 21, 2008

This is the second in a series of articles intended to convey my personal impressions of managing PPC through Google Adwords, Yahoo Panama and MSN Adcenter.

If you missed part one, you can view it here. Today I will be covering Yahoo’s Panama. Of the three, this is my least favoured, so I’m wearing my Yahoo Search Marketing ball cap today, to remind myself not to allow too much vitriol to slip into the article.

Interface

One of the things I like about Panama is the use of colour to highlight various features. Particularly when I’m creating new campaigns or ads, these buttons stand out very well. Also, the capability of different colour fonts and sectional backgrounds eases the look of pages that would otherwise appear cluttered with all sorts of information.

The dashboard is the first of 4 tabs, the others being Campaigns, Reports and Administration.

The Campaign tab contains 5 links to navigate back and forth:

1. Campaign: A table showing all the account campaigns and basic performance information for each.


2. Ad Groups: Shows basic performance data for all ad groups, listing also which campaign each ad group belongs to.


3. Keywords: A table showing all the keywords in the account with basic data and lists which campaign and which ad group each belongs to (very handy feature this).


4. Editorial Status: contains status listing of pending, declined and removed ads and keywords.


5. Search: Allows search for campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads. I am not sure why this page exists as essentially the same function is available on each of the other pages.
   

One thing to note, with exception of the search page, all of the above can be viewed for specific date ranges using a fairly robust date range selection system.

Reports

Reports can be saved in several different formats. Performance reports can be saved in CSV for Excel, CSV, TSV and XML, while financial reports can be saved as either PDF or TXT. Reports can be set up for either the campaign, ad group or keyword level to view overall performance data. There are also optional views for geographic location, daily spending and URL performance. There is an option to use saved templates, but it is limited to 5 saved configurations.

The Tactics selection includes the ability to turn on or off either Sponsored Search or Content Match, set match type to advanced or standard and add keyword exclusions. This is kind of an odd spot to put these; one would normally expect to see this in campaign level settings, but it seems Panama is only capable of this at the account level. A definite minus for flexibility.

Campaign Setup

1. First thing is naming the campaign and setting up geo-targeting. You can select Entire Market or specify by region or specific city/area. There are some pitfalls to watch out for here. If you haven’t read my previous article on this you can find it here.


2. The second step is creating an initial ad group and defining tactics.


3. Now it is time to input your keywords. You can get suggested keywords at this point, have this tool scan a URL for suggestions or input your own list. Excluded (negative) keywords may also be input here.


4. Next step is to set the ad group default maximum bids for sponsored search and/or content match. One thing I really like about this stage is a side graph that shows estimates for average position, number of impressions and clicks, average CPC (cost per click) and the percentage share of available clicks. This graph updates to changes in the set bid, so is useful for gauging where to set your max.


5. The next step is writing the ad itself. Two things to watch out for here; one is the long descriptions and the other, the display URL. Yahoo does not allow long descriptions and has not for quite some time, beyond me why they have not taken it out of the set up process. The display URL input box is hidden and you need to click the little bullet arrow to view. It really does not save much space doing that, so I have no idea why it is designed like that.


6. After this stage is review, which takes you back to the second step and you can edit any errors along the way, or you can just choose to move to stage 7…


7. Which is the budgeting of the campaign and setting up a display schedule if necessary. There is a display estimates feature that allows you to view monthly clicks and impressions for varying schedules.


8. The last step is reviewing and activating your campaign.

The overall difference in quality and difficulty between AdWords and Panama exams was pretty obvious. But at least Yahoo allows professional accreditation, unlike MSN, whose recently implemented program is only available for US residents.

These are some of the gripes I have with Panama I have not covered in previous articles. I will try not to foam at the mouth too much.

• As with MSN Adcenter, the timeout seems much too short. While writing this article I was using an existing account to view different sections of the interface. I had to re-log into the account dozens of times. I would write a few sentences, go back to look at something and more often than not I would find myself logged out.

• Some of the labels and wording are not ideally descriptive. One example I mentioned earlier has to do with conversion tracking. Another instance regards ad display rate. In AdWords, you can adjust ads so better performing ads get more exposure. There did not seem to be a feature in Panama, until I clicked on the “optimize ads” button. I thought this was some sort of tool to suggest ad changes but after reading the lengthy description I realized it is for displaying the “best” ad.
  

• The campaign “Tune up” tool is of questionable value. I ran a test on this and the recommendations given were pretty doubtful. Basically, the tool recommended I up the daily budget by 350%, jack up the keyword max bids (in some cases quite dramatically) and change some match types. The estimated rewards for providing Yahoo with this additional spend were a 2% percent improvement in CTR (click through rate), a 20% increase in clicks and no estimation on conversion changes. All this with only a 4% increase in monthly cost. Regardless of any of the other estimations, I cannot equate a 350% increase in daily spend equaling a 4% increase in estimated spend.
  

• Setting up campaigns, especially ones with lots of ad copy, is laborious and time consuming. There is no option for uploading work or any tools to make this a smoother process. It is either do it from scratch or a lengthy cut and paste session from a spreadsheet. To give an example, I recently set up account in all 3 engines. It took roughly a half hour to get everything set up with the AdWords Editor tool and uploaded. Then having saved the campaign information in CSV format from the AdWords Editor, I uploaded the file into MSN Adcenter, set up the bidding and activated the campaign. This took all of about 10 minutes. Finally, setting up the same campaign in Yahoo, took over 3 tedious hours of copying and pasting.
  

• I mentioned the “hidden” display URL box when writing ads which is annoying when first setting up. If you are creating new ads however, even in an entirely new campaign in an existing account, by default the original display URL is set in there for every new ad in the account. So if you are using a different domain, you have to ensure you open up the hidden entry box and change it for each ad. There is a way around this, but it is obscurely set in Administration under the account set up page.
  
  Also, if you are modifying ads, your modifications will not show until the changes have been approved, which can take several days. By this I mean you cannot even see the changes you have made until the ads have been approved. (This caused me quite a bit of grief recently, as I was required to do a massive overhaul when a client renamed all the URL’s on their site - it was very annoying to be unable to double check my changes upon completion.)
  

• My last and biggest beef with Yahoo is the quality of their support. I have worked with first tier support in the past and I know the drill. The incidence of skimming the first line or so of a support request and firing back a template response which generally has nothing to do with the context of the support request seems to be higher than most here.
  
  My perception of the quality of first tier staff training diminishes with each successive phone call. When trying to figure out the problem which led to the discovery of certain geo-targeting issues, we went through quite a few emails and phone calls before finding someone with an adequate grasp of their system to understand what was wrong.
  
  In another case, a support saga of epic proportions, I received 5 successively different, nonsensical explanations, none of which addressed my actual question. Sensing the circular pattern of this, I struggled to get direct contact up-tier. Incredibly, one rep actually told me editors aren’t allowed phones, to keep them impartial. When I finally got put through to an editor, I was initially told more of the same, but upon realizing I wasn’t buying it, he simply went ahead and fixed the problem. Quite an ordeal and a completely unnecessary waste of time.

Summary

Over the course of writing this article, I realized there are quite a few things I do like about this interface. If they made it a little easier to work with and especially if they improve their customer support, I would have no qualms about using this interface.

by Tim Rule, PPC Specialist, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Celebrating Over 10 Years of Web Marketing Excellence

Labels: PPC, Tim Rule, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: PPC Management – Part 2 - A User's Review of Yahoo

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

This is the first in a series of articles intended to convey my personal impressions of managing PPC through Google Adwords, Yahoo Panama and MSN Adcenter.

Each engine has its pluses and minuses and I thought I would write a short blurb describing my experiences using the interface for each of these. The first engine I will be looking at is the lesser utilized of the three, MSN Adcenter.

Interface

One of the things I like about working within Adcenter is the clean look. Although from time to time I wonder if the uncluttered interface is more a product of its relative youth, there’s no denying it’s easier on the eyes than either of its competitors. In part, this appears to be due to the lack of clutter that plagues both Panama and AdWords. Perhaps Microsoft hasn’t had time to fill every gap on each page as seems to be the case with the others. Part of the reason however, is the use of bullet links. More often than not, clicking on these causes the additional information to appear in place, without having to navigate to another page. This is a refreshing change, as most of my time using these seems to be spent hitting my back button and waiting for complete pages to load.

The layout of subsections is based on 4 tabs; Campaigns, Accounts & Billing, Research and Reports. Clicking on these takes you to exactly what you would expect, no more no less. Everything is laid out in a logical format and it’s pretty quick and easy to find what you’re looking for. After struggling to navigate through Panama in particular, I find this refreshingly simple.

Campaign Setup

Setting up is a 5 step process.

1. First off, you lay out your basic campaign structure by naming the campaign and initial ad group. One of the nifty features at this stage is a checkbox allowing you to copy an existing ad group. I have found this can be a useful time saving feature. Network targeting, campaign scheduling, language and regional targeting can all be set up on this same page. Also, conversion tracking can either be set up here or later in the campaign interface with a single click.
   
   
2. The next step is writing ad copy. The biggest advantage I have found in this stage is that the interface allows you to paste the entire ad description in one line rather than having to fuss with the character limitations for 2 lines of ad text, such as in both Google and Yahoo.
   
   
3. Now you can add your keywords. This is a very straightforward process, You have the option to add your own pre-made list of keywords and/or using a keyword tool that scans a site, or the ad destination URLs. This tool can generate a list of synonyms based on a suggested term, including the number of searches conducted in the previous month.
   
   
4. The last main step is to determine pricing settings. This includes setting a budget (see annoyances and oddities section), bidding and setting bidding options, such as incremental bidding. Here also you can set bids specifically targeting for location, day, time, age, or gender.
   
   
5. The final step is simply a review of all the information entered to this point and the option to change settings. I find this a bit annoying, as opting to change anything takes you back to that stage and after making your adjustment you have to cycle back through the entire process to the review page once again.

Keywords

The only tool this interface has at the moment is the keyword research tool. This can be accessed under the research tab or when editing keyword settings. I have found this far less awkward and time consuming to use than either of the other 2 engines. One thing to note about adjusting keyword settings is how robust the options are generally. When adjusting existing keywords it is simple to add negative keywords to individual keywords, as well as adjust the match types and specific destination URLs by keyword. Another interesting feature is the trend charts, viewable by keyword. With this handy feature you can view individual keyword trends by age and gender, geographical location, social class and affluence.

One major difference with keywords between MSN and the others is the level of editorial control exerted. Recently I was managing a campaign with a particular ad group that had quite a few different ads. Some keywords were reported by MSN as being declined for certain ads, but approved for others. This is certainly a departure from my experiences with either AdWords or Panama, where if a keyword is declined for any reason, that’s that.

Reports

The reporting feature is also quite robust. One can run single use reports or create saved templates for performance, accounting or targeting. It allows for quite a number of specific report types from account overview down to specific ad or keyword performance. A report can be set to display information from hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. Additionally, filters can be set to customize reports to only display information you wish to view. Automated report scheduling is also an option if you wish to receive emails periodically, without having to fetch them personally. The format for these reports are limited. Currently downloading one gets you a zipped csv file. Hopefully they’ll expand that to allow options for other file formats.

Annoyances and Oddities

These are some of the gripes I have with Adcenter.

• For some reason, they’ve incorporated the option to select campaign settings for either daily budgeting or monthly. While this isn’t really a bad thing, if you select daily budgeting, it requires you to set a monthly budget as well. In my experience, doing this seems to have little effect on the amount spent on a given day. For example, I had set a daily budget of $10.00 while selecting a monthly cap of $310.00 to reflect 31 days in a month. Day by day this particular campaign was spending regularly up to and in excess of $20.00 daily. No amount of fiddling seemed to change that behavior, so consequently the monthly budget was used up in half the time.
  
  
• Normally, when optimizing ads and keywords, I like to pause poorly performing ads. Pausing them, rather than deleting them, allows me to retain the statistics for later viewing. This is handy because sometimes I do not wish to drop an ad or a keyword entirely, but just want to turn it off for a time, for whatever reason. Unfortunately, there is no option to pause either an ad or a specific keyword. There is no way short of deletion to stop displaying a specific ad and the only way to “pause” a keyword without deleting it, is to drop the max CPC to the absolute minimum.
  
  
• There is a limitation on viewing data at campaign, ad group or even ad or keyword level. One can only view yesterday, this month, last month, this year, last year or entire time. I find it very strange that unlike anywhere else in this interface, you cannot specify a custom date range. To get around this, you have to go to reports and create and run a report specifying what start and end date you wish to view data for. This can be time consuming and is an obvious flaw that will hopefully be worked out soon.
  
  
• The timeout is quite short. Many times while working in Adcenter, I’ve tabbed back after only several minutes, only to find the system has logged me out and I have to re-login and navigate back to what I’d been working on.

Summary

Overall, I’d have to say that MSN Adcenter is quite easy to use. Although MSN gets the least amount of traffic of the 3 engines, this isn’t entirely disadvantageous. One result of this disparity is that spend for a given campaign is generally significantly less than in either Adwords or Panama. Given that, when a conversion is achieved the difference in ROI is notable. This engine is certainly worth advertising on and with some improvements will be a fine choice.

Labels: MSN, PPC, Tim Rule

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: PPC Management - A User's Review of MSN

Friday, March 28, 2008

• Have you been tracking key performance indicator(s) (KPI) since the inception of the campaign?
  Let me explain; say you launched an SEO campaign to drive more traffic to the “Norco Bikes For Sale” page on your website. In this case a very simple key performance indicator (KPI) would be how many visits the page has received from people that stayed longer than, say 6 or 7 seconds (this time qualifier would all-but-eliminate low quality clickthroughs). If you tracked this all the way from the inception of the campaign and you saw that this KPI had increased perhaps more research is in order before cancelling this campaign. If you saw no measureable improvement in your KPI then the campaign should be canned, or at the very least, paused.
  
  


• If you haven’t adequately monitored the success of a campaign from the start is there a way to determine it now?
  Usually there is a method to determine the success of a campaign using historical data but the method depends on a multitude of circumstances. Here are a couple of the most common methods:
  
  Dig into your web statistics: any hosting company worth its salt (like LunarPages or WeDoHosting) will have web statistics compiled for your website. These stats can provide revealing historical information on the ups and downs of traffic on your website.
  
  Note: I recommend setting up Google Analytics on your website (free) for an alternative view of your stats. I find it best to have Google Analytics installed if even just for piece of mind that you have a backup of your stats (if you move hosting providers for example). If you do this, however, please read this handy article by Matt McGee on protecting your privacy while using Google Analytics.
  
  If web site statistics are not an option then you may have to review your income history and see how much of your income you can tie into the specific marketing campaign. This process is not likely to be painless and may very well be impossible if you have a large number of campaigns going on at the same time; however, it could prove worthwhile if it keeps you from wrongly shutting down a profitable campaign.
  


• What do your frontlines say? Are you getting more sales from the web?
  Every sales person in your office should be asking how prospects found you and they should be keeping meticulous notes on this information. If they are then ask them if they have seen a marked increase in web-related phone calls and whether they found you through a (specific) search engine. This kind of info is invaluable to determining the success of any marketing campaign.
  
  


• Is the campaign nearly profitable but not quite?
  If you can see the campaign is close to being profitable then I strongly recommend sticking to your guns (if you can afford to) and conduct testing to increase the viability of the campaign before giving up on it.
  
  Multivariate testing is often a great technique for improving a campaign. Multivariate testing is a term used to describe the tweaking of a landing page in manner that (hopefully) influences a desired reaction from the visitor. Tweaks could be as simple as removing an image of a Norco Bike at the top of the landing page which in-turn moves the marketing text higher up the page. A multivariate test would examine how this seemingly minor change positively or negatively affects the page. Usually a positive reaction would be an increase in clickthroughs to a goal page (such as a purchase page or an inquiry form).
  
  Here is an excellent example of successful multivariate testing.
  
  


• Did you check to see if your pay-per-click campaign was profitable before turning it off?
  When you are looking at cost cutting your attention will most likely be focused on major expenditures like pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns and rightfully so; a poorly performing campaign can be a major drain. That said, you must do your homework before shutting down a PPC campaign because it could be delivering the profit you desperately need. In a perfect world this question would be a waste of space but I am sure a vast number of PPC campaigns are run without proper monitoring so I feel this reminder to verify profitability is warranted. If your campaign has not been properly monitored then I suggest thinking carefully about your next step. You can either turn it off for the time being and see what effect it has on your sales OR immediately install the appropriate mechanisms to track a pay-per-click campaign and monitor it long enough to determine if it is in fact successful; the time required depends on the breadth of the campaign but 2 weeks should do the trick.

• Has there been a regular and distinct increase in subscribers to your blog RSS feed or newsletter subscriptions?
  If you are using Feedburner or another RSS management tool look at your average sign-ups on a weekly basis (take more than one sample) before you start your SMM campaign(s) and then compare that to a sampling of a few weeks over the past month or two. Do the same examination for your newsletter subscriptions (using whatever management tool you use to monitor signups). Do you see a substantial increase in signups on a weekly basis? If not then have an in-depth discussion with your SMM team or vendor and determine where the disconnect is. After all, these assets have to be doing something for their money – perhaps they see another metric increasing.
  
  


• Are you seeing more traffic from social media websites? If so, are they of a high enough quality?
  Open your web site statistics, go to your referral stats and look for increased traffic from social media websites your SMM team is concentrating on. If you don’t find any additional traffic stop at this point and have a serious discussion with your SMM team.
  
  If you do find an increase of traffic from social sites then further segment this data and determine the quality of this traffic. For example, using ClickTracks Professional it is easy to create a filter that shows only visitors from StumbleUpon (or another group of social sites) that stays on your website longer than 5 seconds; this will eliminate zero second (aka “useless”) traffic and leave you with the worthwhile data. Now take this traffic and compare it to the expense of acquiring it through your current SMM campaign. If the numbers appear favourable and you feel the benefit outweighs the costs then you have your answer – keep the program. If the numbers are unfavourable either sit down with your SMM team to adjust/tweak/modifiy your campaign (by finding more appropriate social sites to become active on) or shut the campaign down until the winds are again favourable to refocus and try again.
  
  


• Are you or your company getting talked about more often? Is it positive or negative talk?
  No matter what type of campaign you have running it is important to keep tabs on your online reputation. While running a SMM campaign it is easy to step on toes and cause ill-will; especially if your marketers are not taking care to understand the unique etiquette of each social property they participate in. If you are not sure of your current reputation then try searching Google for specific iterations of your business name and your key employee names. Document anything that appears positive or negative. Also make certain to setup a Google News Alert for specific key phrases so that you can be alerted whenever relevant fresh content is made available in Google’s vast database. If you find negative press then handle it immediately by responding to it (decide how this best be done) and quickly inform your SMM team of the issue so they can learn from it and avoid a reoccurrence. If you find a lot of negative press then you need to decide if your SMM campaign is worthwhile continuing since you have to spend so much time pursuing damage control.

Labels: PPC, Reputation Management, Ross Dunn, SEO Tips, Social Marketing, Tutorials

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Recessions Can Teach Valuable Marketing Lessons

Friday, March 14, 2008

• Matches consumer specified search terms for something they are already interested in researching/purchasing, with the advertiser providing what they are looking for.

• A well managed campaign allows consumer behavior to be monitored to assist in adjusting the effectiveness of the campaign while it’s running.

• In some cases, particularly ecommerce sites, ROI can be tracked very accurately.

• Advertiser pays only when potential customers interact with their ad.

• Ad copy is very limited in size which makes it difficult to “shoehorn” in a lot of information to attract customers.

• Cost per click is dynamic not fixed; rates can depend on a number of different factors. Potential overspend is offset easily by setting a budgetary cap.

• PPC can be susceptible to abuse, such as click fraud. However, there are methods employed by search engines to detect much of this. Additionally, aftermarket analytics solutions such as ClickTracks, can also be of significant help in narrowing down possible click fraud and generate a report for advertisers to send to the appropriate search engine.

• PPC differs from more traditional forms of advertising in that it displays ads to those who are actively looking, rather than merely “display and pray” to a demographic. Also, the ability to gather information and adjust an advertising campaign at any given time makes it a more flexible alternative to broadcast or printed media.

• As a rule, using keywords most relevant to the content on your site’s landing page(s) will net the most qualified traffic and result in better positioning within a search engine for reduced cost.

• Keywords that are very general will usually result in greatly increased cost by displaying ads to searchers that are unlikely to follow through to purchase.

• One technique often overlooked is the use of negative keywords to filter out unwanted traffic. For example, using the word “free” as a negative keyword would block out any searches that include the word “free”. If you are not offering free products or services you would definitely not want ads displayed to searchers using that term. This can also be a very effective optimization technique to enable the use of keywords that are too general otherwise.

• Using “long tail” keywords. Keywords that are highly relevant but not often searched for can be a very inexpensive means of boosting niche traffic.

• Ads should first and foremost be designed to get the searchers attention through relevance and a little creative writing.

• Testing different ads against each other is the best way to optimize the effectiveness of an ad group.

• Whenever possible, employing keywords in the ad text is best practice. It can be difficult to do this while keeping the ads appealing to searchers, but it will increase the quality of the ad to the search provider and will generally result in better positioning at reduced costs.

• The ad destination must be a working link to a landing page relevant to the user’s search. Consequences of not following this guideline range from greatly increased cost per click to having ad service declined outright by the search engines.

• Rather than arbitrarily setting out bids based on estimations, best practice is to start low and spend a bit of time daily adjusting upwards until reaching optimal bids.

• In some cases, particularly when bidding on very competitive keywords, it’s not always the best approach to vie for the number 1 position. Avoid getting locked into a bidding war over the top positions.

Labels: PPC, Tim Rule

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: What is PPC?

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Labels: Google, Link Forth, PPC, Social Marketing, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Today's Social Media Linkforth

Friday, February 15, 2008

Labels: Google, PPC, Scott Van Achte

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Google to Crack Down on AdWords Display URLs

Monday, January 28, 2008

1. A revamping of YSM's system should be devised for more user friendly and efficient account creation and management. Yahoo's current system has the effect of putting all the setup and management workload on the advertisers.
   
   
2. Country restrictions should be made clear to the advertiser at the account creation stage.
   
   
3. Any ad copy language restrictions in place for specific geographic areas should be clearly noted by Yahoo. In cases where ads are disallowed due to language, there should be an indication the ads will not be served. In the case we recently experienced, there were no editorial alerts or any other obvious indication the Canada – English campaign was not functioning.
   

Labels: PPC, Tim Rule, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Geo-Targeting Headaches with Yahoo Search Marketing

Friday, December 07, 2007

Labels: Google, PPC, Scott Van Achte, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Ad-Butterfly Gives Bloggers More Control

Friday, November 09, 2007

According to Business Week, AOL has acquired pay per click search engine Quigo for a reported $300 million. The acquisition includes the AdSonar and Feedpoint platforms.

Quigo has been serving up ads for a number of Time.com properties, and with the success they have been having, saw the potential and went forward with the purchase.

The deal which is expected to close later this year, will allow for expansion of their contextual advertising on AOL as well as their partner sites. For the time being, Google will continue to provide AdWords ads alongside AOL search results.

Labels: Other Engines, PPC, Scott Van Achte

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: AOL Acquires Quigo

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Labels: Coupon Codes, Other News, PPC, SEO News

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: WordTracker Promotion Extended

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Labels: PPC, Scott Van Achte

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: PPC Success in Five Steps

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Labels: PPC, Scott Van Achte, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Minor Updates to Yahoo's Panama

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Labels: PPC, Scott Van Achte

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Keyword Research for PPC

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Labels: Analytics, PPC, Ross Dunn, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Yahoo Thins the Herd of Available Ad Companies

Friday, August 31, 2007

• How to sneak in advertisements that under normal circumstances would never make it past editorial control.
• How to steal ALL of the top 10 pay per click positions.
• How to get your competitor's campaign dropped in a single, swift move.

Labels: PPC, Ross Dunn, Tutorials

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Black Hat Style PPC Techniques

Monday, August 20, 2007

• URLs vs Name Brand: the big advertisements are more often recommending prospects search for their name online rather than provide a URL. This is because a high percentage (sorry can't remember the #) of prospects cannot remember the URL later but have little problem remembering the brand.
  
  
• Cover Your Assets: When advertising offline make certain to buy paid placements for the many potential misspellings from your campaign. This recommendation also includes purchasing the applicable misspellings of the campaign URL for those that use it. If you fail to cover these gaps you can lose a substantial number of potential buyers.
  
  
• The Special K Campaign: One of the speakers noted a branding campaign that many of us likely witnessed during the 2006 Christmas/New Years season by Kellogs. The concept of the popular TV commercial was that Special K wanted to help you in your bid to become healthier. The crossover to the Internet occurred when anyone typed in "Special K" into Yahoo (who was a participant in this campaign) they were provided with a co-branded customized search result page that provided targeted routes for users. One such route was to a forum area where users could get help and ask questions about their bid to get healthier. The other was a co-branded tips section where there was plenty of advice on snack eating, associated diets, food myths, etc.
  
  So what does this branding campaign demonstrate? Special K took an approach that is now the spirit of social marketing; they were not directly asking people to buy Special K but they were building credibility for their brand by partnering with their prospects in their bid to get healthier. Brilliant!
  
  
• A Funny Bit About Contextual: I have never been a big fan of contextual advertising so when the search agency representatives on the panel were asked how they felt contextual worked into their marketing plans I perked up. What I heard made me grin ear to ear... the panelists seemed a bit perplexed for a moment and then in their own turn essentially said contextual advertising was only considered with any money that was left in a campaign. In other words.... forget about it unless you have some pennies to spare and you want to really blanket the world.
  
  
• How will the growth of universal search affect paid search marketing?: I was surprised by the answer to this question. Essentially the agency panelists agreed that universal search could be bad for paid advertising. The reason they cited was the more accurate organic search becomes the less likely it is that searchers will act on paid advertisements. I was surprised more by their candor than anything. In my opinion they are entirely correct which is why I firmly believe that organic search engine optimization is a key component to every online marketing campaign.
  
  
• Yahoo Universal Search: Yahoo representative Kelly Graziadei noted that Yahoo is currently testing various forms of universal search within its results. One such example can be seen by searching for "Transformers". In this instance Yahoo has decided to keep the top 10 organic rankings intact but they have preceded them with a graphic enticing viewers to check out the movie trailer to the popular movie or see reviews and find show times in their zip code.
  
  
• Local Better than International: Scott Linzer, Director of Search Marketing at Universal McCann loosely noted that the campaigns which made the more time consuming foray into creating locally targeted campaigns experienced a better bang for their advertising dollar in contrast to the more common national approach.
  
  
• PPC and Organic are a Logical Pairing: both of the agency advocates noted that even after achieving a #1 ranking for a specific term there are direct benefits to continuing with a paid campaign for the very same term. To back this up they stressed the benefit of multiple locations for branding but they made an additional point that I thought very logical: the content within paid advertisements are easier to control and to revise to improve clickthroughs than organic rankings currently are.
  
  
• What is a Reasonable Conversion Percentage?: I asked Scott Linzer this question and his response was that 2 percent was a reasonable conversion expectation for a paid campaign. Any lower than 2 percent requires serious scrutiny and continued testing. Of course, I expect no one ever stops testing. I should note that the company Scott works for, Universal McCann, handles a great deal of Microsoft's paid advertising so I was happy to get his opinion on this question.

Labels: Conferences, PPC, Ross Dunn, SEO, SES San Jose 2007, Social Marketing

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: How Search Integrates as a Brand Vehicle

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Labels: PPC, Scott Van Achte, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Yahoo's Quality Based Pricing

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Labels: PPC, Scott Van Achte, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Yahoo Ad Descriptions About to Change

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Labels: PPC, Scott Van Achte, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Panama Launches in Europe

Thursday, May 03, 2007

An AdWords Exploit has been put to rest recently by Google after scammers running “smarttrack.org” attempted to capture users banking details and other private information.

At Inside Adwords, the official AdWords Blog, a post was noted late last month regarding the problem.

“On Tuesday, April 24th, Google identified and canceled AdWords accounts displaying ads that re-directed users to malicious sites. These sites attempted to install malware onto users’ computers. This is an issue we’ve taken very seriously and will continue to monitor. We are also evaluating our systems to ensure that the appropriate measures are in place to block future attempts.”

The post goes on to note that Google actively works to detect and remove sites involved in malware, from both their paid and organic listings.

At PC World, Matthew Broersma describes what occurred in some more detail. In essence the attack worked by creating seemingly legitimate ads; when a user searched for the paid phrase, an ad would appear for a variety of well known brands, including such names as the BBB.

When the user clicked on the ad created by the hacker, they were redirected through a URL located at “smarttrack.org” before being directed to the legitimate source, with nothing appearing out of the ordinary. During the redirect however, the “site used a modified MDAC exploit to attempt to install a backdoor and a post-logger on to the user's system.”

Labels: Google, PPC, Scott Van Achte

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Adwords Hackers Stopped - For Now

Monday, April 23, 2007

Labels: Google, PPC, Ross Dunn, SEO, SEO News

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Raising Flags Over Google's Newly Inherited SEO Firm

Monday, April 16, 2007

At the 2007 SES New York, Google's Shuman Ghosemajumder responds to the question: (abbreviated) "How is it possible for Google to identify click fraud when an aggressor utilizes rotating proxies?". Shuman responds by discussing the Clickbot A botnet case and how Google deciphered the click fraud in that situation. This video was taken during the "Auditing Paid Listings and Click Fraud Issues" seminar that took place on April 12, 2007.

This video is courtesy of the StepForth SEO Blog. Video taken by Ross Dunn, CEO of StepForth SEO Services. Special thanks to Matt McGowan of Incisive Media for allowing StepForth to record this footage.

Labels: Click Fraud, Conferences, Google, Interviews, PPC, Ross Dunn, SEO News, Video

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: SES NY - Google's Shuman Ghosemajumder Discusses Click Fraud

Thursday, March 08, 2007

1. Click on the Campaign Name
2. Click on the AdGroup
3. Click on the specific keyword
4. This will bring you to a page with specific stats on that keyword including a chart. At this step, click the edit link near the top of the page beside "Custom URL"
5. In the pop up window enter the URL for the keyword and click submit.

https://login22.marketingsolutions.yahoo.com/adui/
signin/loadSignin.do?signt=true
HTML error (5/16): The DOCTYPE declaration is missing.
HTML error (231/12): Illegal character ³/² in tag.
HTML error (237/25): Illegal character ³/² in tag.
HTML error (243/146): Illegal character ³/² in tag.
HTML error (249/73): Illegal character ³/² in tag.
HTML error (323/11): Illegal character ³/² in tag.
HTML error (345/15): Illegal character ³/² in tag.
HTML error (352/16): Illegal character ³/² in tag.
https://login22.marketingsolutions.yahoo.com/adui/
CSS Error (49/135): Unknown CSS property ³zoom².
CSS Error (79/77): Unknown CSS property ³zoom².
CSS Error (105/9): Unknown CSS property ³opacity².
CSS Error (114/9): Unknown CSS property ³opacity².

The server's certificate chain is incomplete and the signers are not registered

"The certificate on the server has expired"

A script on this page failed to execute. This may keep this page from functioning properly.Statement on line 11632: Expression did not evaluate to a function object:0.addevevtlistner

Labels: PPC, Scott Van Achte, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Yahoo Panama Pros and Cons: Part 2

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

• Previously you were stuck with only one live ad for any given phrase; now you can create multiple ads for a given ad group. With the ability to have multiple ads for each phrase opens the doors to easier testing of which ad copy is better suited for your ads and prospective clients.
  
  
• Ad approval is now instant for most ads and keywords. While there is still a “pending approval” process for some sets of phrases, in many cases your ad changes and keyword additions are now instant. No longer do advertisers have to wait a number of days for their ads to go live.
  
  
• With the old system, the level of geographic targeting was very limited. Under the new Yahoo Panama the options are much more sophisticated. For example, there is an option for blocking entire continents for your ad campaigns. Rather than selecting each continent/country you want to appear in, if you are only trying to avoid one specific region, you can easily block it from your campaign.
  
  
• The geo targeting options have also expanded to allow for more specific ad targeting. Advertisers now have the ability to target specific states and provinces – a feature previously unavailable. Canadian advertisers were forced to advertise to the US even though they wanted ads only to appear for the Canadian market. This update now provides the option to target Canada only – a big plus for any advertisers who are only able to sell in the Canadian marketplace.

• One of the downsides most discussed is the transfer of account stats from the old system to the new. Once your account has been transferred, the new system will not log any of the old system historical data. While this information is still accessible by logging into the old interface (which is made read only), it would certainly make more sense if stats were available under the new account login.
  
  
• Another issue campaign tracking. After the switch has been made, as long as you do not change any tracking settings everything should continue to work as normal; once you adjust the analytics or tracking options, you will need to replace your tracking code with a new piece of code provided by Yahoo. There have been reports where after the account is upgraded, the conversion stats no longer appear and the code needs to be immediately replaced. While not everyone seems to be having this problem, it is certainly a bug worth noting. If you have not yet upgraded, or upgraded but not checked your tracking codes, it would be best to tackle this issue right away to ensure everything will work correctly.
  
  
• There have been some reports that after the account transition some ad titles, descriptions, and even keywords, have been disrupted. Upon upgrading your account be sure to check all your ad copy and phrases to ensure that they are still correct or you could end up spending money on incorrect phrases, or damaged ad copy.

1. Log into your account. You will be presented with your account dashboard.
2. Click on the name of the campaign you wish to change
3. Click on “Edit Campaign” in the top right.
4. Click “Edit” at the top right of the “Campaign General Information” box.
5. Change the account name.
6. Click “Save Changes”.
7. Then click “Dashboard” to return to where you were.
   

1. Log into your account. You will be presented with the “All campaigns” view.
2. Click the checkbox beside the campaign you wish to rename and click “Edit Campaign”.
3. Enter a new campaign name.
4. Click “Save Changes” (also brings you back to where you were).

Labels: PPC, Scott Van Achte, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Yahoo Panama - Pros and Cons

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Labels: Google, PPC, Ross Dunn

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Canada Exists? "Yes" Google Concedes

Monday, February 19, 2007

Labels: Google, PPC

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: New Feature for AdWords

Thursday, January 04, 2007

• Windows Live: will continue the uphill battle of branding their relatively new search platform; the confusion over whether Windows Live is a replacement for MSN contributed to their forbidding decline in market share in 2006. My staff and I firmly agree, however, that MSN/Windows Live will rebound and increase its market share slightly over pre-2006 statistics.
  
  
• Yahoo!: We expect Yahoo to improve in 2007 due to the fresh perspectives of new staff (from the 2006 executive restructuring) and the incredible potential of this massive search network. Unfortunately, I read that Yahoo is comfortable with its current market share and has no illusions about ever being a market leader; hardly the kind of intentional goal setting that leads to results. Their unfortunate vision statement aside, I anticipate Yahoo will increase its global market share from the current 19% to 24%. Frankly, I am still dumbfounded that Yahoo has anything less than a 30% stake. I realize Google is the clear victor in the search engine wars but Yahoo definitely has the necessary weight to grab a better than 19% share.
  
  
• Ask: 2006 was a good year for Ask because they stuck to their guns and focused on what they were good at; answering questions. Ask has gained quite a loyal following over the past couple of years and I expect it will continue to do so as long as it maintains its focus; Ask’s push into local and mobile answers search was particularly well timed. I expect Ask will not lose any market share over 2007; in fact I would be surprised if they didn’t take a few more percentage points over the year.
  
  
• Google: Google’s insatiable appetite for growth will have it pushing for more market share in Asia and Europe where new Google outposts have recently opened. In addition, I expect that its algorithms will be improved sometime in the 3rd quarter to further devalue the benefit of reciprocal links (see more in Section 2 under "Link Building"). Google will continue to improve its mobile services which will culminate in more aggressive promotion of searching “on the go” wherever you are in the world.
  
  
• Baidu: I don’t consider this engine to be one of the major 4 search engines (yet) but it has grown so much over the past 2 years that it just felt right to add it. Who is Baidu? Baidu.com is China’s leading search engine and since its conception in 2000 by two young entrepreneurs, this company has experienced massive growth (i.e. their IPO in 2005 started at $27/share and is now sitting at $122/share); sound reminiscent of Google? In my opinion Baidu is not going to be another Google but it has potential to grab a noteworthy piece of the search market when it finally premieres in North America; still no word yet when this premiere might happen but I expect the first steps to begin late this year. Part of Baidu’s success stems from its simple and effective methods of searching for multimedia such as mp3’s and videos online in addition to standard searchable content.
  

• Link Building: The industry of link building will take quite a hit this year as Google (among other SE’s) continues the process of weeding out unscrupulous linking techniques such as haphazard reciprocal link building and advanced link building directories (previously missed in other weedings). By no means will Google get a handle on all of the less desirable links but an onward push to cleansing rigged results based on false popularity will be noticed throughout the industry.
  
  The future of link building will be more difficult but definitely more effective because one-way links (someone linking to you without need for reciprocation), be it through carefully researched paid links or from premiere link building companies, will finally be known as the only way to provide a lasting ranking advantage. For more information visit the home of the guru of link building, Eric Ward or read "Thinking (a lot) About Link Building" by Jim Hedger.
  
  
• Search Engine Optimization: As the most complex search engine Google tends to set the bar for best optimization practices so focusing on attaining results on Google usually nets favourable results on the other major engines. With that information in mind I do not see any reason that ethical optimization tactics will be revised to any significant level in 2007. If you would like a refresher on what it takes to optimize a web page see "The Ten Minute Optimization REDUX" white paper.
  
  
• SPAMMERS Beware: This year Google will begin a more focused campaign of eradication for websites using keyword stuffing to attain search engine results. It amazes me to this day that I still find top ranking sites with keyword-stuffed footer navigations designed to fortify competitive rankings and attain dozens of long-tail results. At any rate, it has been a long time since I have seen a significant cleansing of Google’s SERPS and I would be blown away if we don’t see at least one significant cleanse this year. For more information on what is considered SPAM please see "15 Shades of SEO SPAM."
  
  
• PPC: This year Google will crank up the volume and remove 99% of the Adsense-driven leader pages that repeatedly clog the top ten rankings under many queries. Unfortunately, Google’s “don’t be evil” catchphrase may clash with their interest in the bottom line since these SPAM sites effectively add to Google’s pocketbook.
  
  
• Mobile Search: I cannot stress enough the importance of this emerging industry and I expect that the increase in R&D from Google and some effort from Yahoo and Microsoft in this area will produce an undeniable need for separate, mobile-friendly websites (i.e. .mobi sites designed entirely for mobile use). This market place will see significant growth this year as Internet marketing companies jump into the fray and begin offering mobile site creation, promotion and optimization. For more information on the emerging mobile market place see "Stake Your Claim on the Mobile Web."
  

• Web Site Analytics: Understanding and managing the behaviour of web site visitors is crucial to repeated online success and I expect this fact will finally become common knowledge throughout 2007. Consequently, enterprising new technologies like ClickTale will emerge and ClickTracks (an analytics leader) will see record sales beyond their expectations. For some introductory information on analytics see "Did You Know You Had Stats?"
  
  
• Competitor Analysis: In an effort to shorten the path to online success, it is important to start any online marketing with a clear understanding of what it takes to attain rankings and deconstructing the tactics that led to a competitor’s success is an important first step. StepForth has been performing advanced competitor analysis services for over 3 years now and every year we see the demand for such intelligence mounting. I expect the need to grow significantly over 2007 and it will become an accepted first step for all online campaigns within the next 2 years. For more information see our SEO Research page.
  
  
• Search Engine Friendly Web Design: The importance of search engine visibility to online success is now common knowledge and this year more and more informed design clients will be demanding their web designers create search engine friendly web sites vs. websites that pose significant, if not fundamental barriers to rankings. "Is Your Website Search Engine Friendly?"
  
  
• Professional Copy Writing: Does your content sell your site? In other words, are you converting your visitors? Professional copy writing is a must because it allows you, the site owner, to make more money from the traffic that you attain. Consequently, a higher conversion ratio means you have more money to reinvest in your online success and it is entirely reasonable to expect you may be making more money in the #10 position in rankings than a website in the #1 position that has poorly written sales copy. There is absolutely no question in my mind that professional copy writing services is going to be a growth market in 2007. If you haven’t had your sales copy professionally written then drop me a note because I know of an excellent copywriting company that may radically increase your bottom line.
  

• Google will finally show they care about their neighbours to the North and allow Canadian companies to become Adwords Certified; this will ultimately extend Canadians the benefit of participating in all beta programs.
  
  
• A lesser search engine such as Baidu or a newcomer will take a significant (10% +) of the global search market share; we really need a new presence in the list of major search engines to keep life interesting.
  
  
• Search engines will work together on an unprecedented scale to eradicate the majority of pay-per-click fraud.
  
  
• StepForth will be sent loads of cool bling from search engines from around the world. We particularly want banners from the major search engines that we can hang on our wall - bling call!
  

Labels: Analytics, Ask, Baidu, Google, Jim Hedger, Mobile, MSN, Other Engines, PPC, Ross Dunn, Scott Van Achte, SEO, SEO Tips, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: StepForth’s Predictions for 2007

Monday, December 11, 2006

Labels: Click Fraud, Google, PPC, Ross Dunn

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Click Fraud and National Security Concerns Raised

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Labels: Google, PPC, Scott Van Achte

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Click-Fraudster Case Dropped by Google

Thursday, November 30, 2006

This change has been forthcoming for some time now. The new Yahoo Search Marketing
platform is available for some who have been chosen for early release, and for the rest, the new year will see the complete rollover into the new system. At the beginning of December, however, we will see the launch of the new bidding system at YSM and some recent changes to how you will manage your bidding. So what exactly is changing?

Top 5 Max Bids and Your Position

The current bids for the top 5 paid placements will be removed along with the your position column.

View Bids Tool

No longer will you be able to view the exact bid for specific key phrases as the view bids tool is being removed.

Estimated Average Position

You will no longer be able to view your exact position, however you will see your estimated average position. This figure is based on both your bid, and the bids of other advertisers.

Bid Range for Top Positions

Rather than seeing the exact bids, you will see a range of bids that advertisers
are willing to pay for their ads.

Why are these things changing? The new bidding system with the new YSM platform is no longer that of a simple bid for position concept. The new form of bidding is now much more Google-like with click through rates, on site content, and bids all contributing to your ad rank. With this new system items such as the view bids tool, and top 5 max bids will be somewhat irrelevant to advertisers.

As some advertisers have already been rolled over into the new system, this bidding change reflected in the old system is to accommodate advertisers with more accurate bidding information. The following explanation has been provided by Yahoo to its advertisers:

Why are you making this change to the bid information on the Manage Bids page? "We are making this change in order to provide advertisers who have not yet upgraded to the new Sponsored Search with accurate bidding information. As you may know, we've begun inviting U.S. advertisers to upgrade their accounts to the new Sponsored Search and invitations will continue to be sent in stages to U.S. advertisers over the remainder of the year and early next year. Given the way bid information is currently displayed, as advertisers upgrade to the new Sponsored Search, their bids would no longer be visible in the current system. By making this change, we are able to provide all advertisers with consistent and accurate bidding information, regardless of whether they have upgraded their accounts yet or not."

Labels: PPC, Scott Van Achte, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Yahoo Search Marketing Bidding Changes

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Labels: PPC, Scott Van Achte

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: PPC Campaign Assistance

Wednesday, August 27, 2003

Labels: PPC

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Paid Listings Continue to Confuse Search Engine Users

Wednesday, August 20, 2003

Labels: Jim Hedger, PPC

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