How Web 2.0 And Social Bookmarking Can Work For You

Web 2.0 should be at the center of every business owners plan to survive in the Internet world. It is the latest rage sporting the covers of several magazines as well as the biggest topic on the web. It is speculated to be the resurgence of the dot com boom. For the next five weeks, we will look at Web 2.0, specifically social bookmarking, wikis, blogs, Squidoo and Video, and how they affect business owners.

So What Is Web 2.0?

There is still controversy surrounding what exactly the term Web 2.0 entails. Some view it as a marketing buzzword while others view it as the new wisdom of the Internet. For the purpose of this newsletter we are looking at Web 2.0 as the new conventional wisdom of the Internet. Web 2.0 is defined as websites that build on community or offer a service. Rather than offering simply static information, Web 2.0 allows for interactive viewing of the net. There are several sites that have already mastered the Web 2.0 phenomenon such as Flickr, MySpace, Squidoo, YouTube and the social bookmarking site del.icio.us.

The function of these sites is to use community to maintain content. Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media, says, “The central idea is harnessing collective intelligence.” Every one of these sites has no content on its own. They all rely on users to fill them with content. It comes down to the art of creating community. The notion is that if you get enough people in a room together, or in this case on the same site, the content created can be more knowledgeable than even the most seasoned journalists could provide.

With Web 2.0 Comes An Attitude Or Culture

Web 2.0 has completely revolutionized the Internet industry by making it a giant community. Everything is live and instant. It has taken down the barriers of the old thinking that only professionals can run a website. Now anyone can do it, and they can do it cheaply while adding money to their bank accounts.

How Does Social Bookmarking Fit Into Web 2.0?

Social bookmarking is the practice of saving bookmarks to a public website and tagging them with keywords. To create a collection of social bookmarks, you register with a social bookmarking site, which lets you store bookmarks, add tags of your choice, and designate individual bookmarks as public or private.

How Can Your Business Benefit From Social Bookmarking?

First social bookmarking sites allow you to get to your bookmarks from anywhere there is a computer. So if you are out of town on business, you still have access to your bookmarks without the added headaches of extra research. Second, it allows you to share your site with others, whether they are potential customers, friends, employees, etc. Other people can view your site for reference, entertainment, collaboration, etc. Third, it allows you to access the links that everyone wants to remember. You can see whether two people have chosen to remember a link, or whether it was useful enough for a thousand people to remember — which may help you find things that are useful for you, too. Finally, it is one more way for you to market your site by registering yourself and adding your site as your bookmark.

Next week we will look into Wikis; what they are, how they work and how they can benefit businesses.

Elixir Systems is a full service search engine marketing company specializing in organic search engine optimization services, online public relations management and paid search or PPC management. For more information visit Elixir Systems

Posted in Search Engine Optimization | 1 Comment »

A Beginner’s Guide to Google AdWords

This guide has been written to help you get started in Google Adwords and save you time and effort on initial research.

You may already be familiar with the ins and outs of Google search results. However, just in case you aren’t familiar where ads appear, Google’s paid ads appear separately in the search results on the right hand side of the screen and in some instances at the top of the screen. For example let’s use one of the most competitive terms for paid ads, “search engine optimization”. As you can see below, the #1 ad pays the most for your click and #2 second most and so on to the last paid ad paying the least.

Google AdWords can provide an inexpensive advertising venue for you to increase your leads. However, you need to do your research to ensure you achieve a positive ROI – Return on Investment. There are some simple guidelines to follow to save you landing in some pitfalls and wasting a lot of money.

Benefits to AdWords

As mentioned earlier in brief, advertisers bid on keywords, the more an advertiser is willing to pay the higher the likelihood the ad will appear higher in position in the list of ads served. Google, invariably wanting to make the most from advertisers, determines placement based on a combination of click through rate, bid amount and budget. Of course, in order to maximize revenue and please searchers Google does have editorial-guidelines for ads served and all ads must receive a minimum percentage click through or they are removed.

AdWords Guidelines

Clearly and accurately describe the website; this is to the advertiser and searchers benefit. Ultimately, the more qualified the visitor who clicks the ad, the higher the likelihood the clicker will convert into a lead. By providing clear and accurate information, searchers who click the ad are qualified leads, which tend to convert more consistently than unqualified leads. The most effective advertising communicates a clear message to a targeted audience. Avoid excessive capitalization, superlatives and lavish exclamation marks in the ad. By doing this you are not only serving the visitor you are filtering unwanted clicks from non-buyers. Due to space limitations your ad message will need to be concise. Select keywords that are relevant to your product, service or content. Call to action phrases are not allowed (i.e. you cannot use phrases like “click here” in your ad copy.) There are also no pop-ups.

Google AdWords Getting Started – The Basics

• Visit Google AdWords - and read all the information about getting started http://www.google.com/ads/
• Open an account – Keep a record of your log in and password.
• Target language and country - This is very important because if your product or service is not International you will waste money when your Ad shows up in other countries and is clicked on.
• Create your Ad Groups.
• Establish your search terms – Use the free tools such as Yahoo keyword search suggestion tool to find search terms or keywords which are being searched on http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/. WordTracker offers a one day free trial and is another valuable tool for keyword research. Use keyword variations to reach more prospects. A variety or spellings and derivatives of keywords will increase the chances of your ads being served. Be sure to use common misspellings and plurals in your keyword list. Another good place to target your ads is through competitor key terms, for example ‘company name’.
  Avoid: Highly competitive and expensive terms. For example if you are in the web design business you would avoid ‘web design’, ‘website design’ until you are more experienced and complete your testing phase. Ensure the learning curve runs out before the budget does.
• Less is more – Here is a basic ad targeting potential prospects for a home based business. You’ll want to keep it short to stand out from the crowd in order to increase the ad’s click through rate.

  Improve Your Life Forever – Title Tag (25 characters max) Attention Grabber
  Business minded? – Ad content line 1 (35 characters max) Description
  Serious about starting one? - Ad content line 2 (35 characters max) Call to Action
  TheJourneyBeginsNow.com – Landing page URL (35 characters max)

• Define max click - Google will suggest a cost per click, but the recommendation does not need to be adhered to. Arguments have been heard that #1 position does not always mean increased sales; sometimes a second position will filter useless clicks and provide targeted traffic with a higher conversion ration. The rule of thumb is positions 1-3 garner the most traffic and best results. Increasing either your maximum cost-per-click or the ads click through rate will generally improve the ad’s position.
• Broad match - This is the default option. Broad match is targeting keywords in a loosely defined manner. Ads appear based on keywords that have been queried by search users. For instance, if the keywords you are planning on broad matching are “mountain bikes” and users search for the terms “bikes that can climb a mountain”, your ad will appear; as opposed to exact match, which requires that the keywords selections must exactly match the query.
• Phrase match - is indicated when quotations are used in the phrase. A keyword phrase set to phrase match will only appear when the exact phrase is searched on. For example “mountain bikes” will appear when searchers search for “brand name mountain bikes”, but would not appear for “brand name mountain racing bikes”.
• Exact match - is when the keyword or phrase is entered with brackets. The phrase will only serve ads when the entered search phrase is identical to you defined keyword phrase. [Mountain bikes] will only appear when searchers search for “mountain bikes”. This is where you would want to enter common misspellings. Eg. [mountan bikes] would appear for “mountan bikes”.
• Negative keyword - is helpful in filtering unrelated phrases. A dash is entered before the filtering phrase. “Mountain bike -races will not appear if mountain bike races are searched on. Tip – make sure you enter negative terms that are irrelevant to your industry. Such as “law” or if you are using broad match for MLM and you don’t want your ad to appear under “mlm law” exclude “law” here.
• Landing Page - is important because this not only helps with tracking, but also provides a focused and specific landing page for searchers. Information can be related to the actual search, while also increasing the conversion ratios for sales. A focused landing page with content related and using the same terminology as the actual search will show the searcher that your solution is relevant to their needs.
• Define budget - in order to maximize exposure Google recommends a daily budget for each campaign. Google’s suggested budget is helpful in receiving consistent traffic throughout the advertising campaign. Keep in mind this is only Google’s recommendation; ultimately it is up to you to determine a budget that is affordable and suitable.
• Tracking - Google supplies free tracking tools that assist advertisers in determining their return on investment based on keyword searches and phrases. While the technology is not perfect and cannot track phone and purchase orders, it should give advertisers a sense of what phrases and keywords are converting well in their advertising campaign.
  1. http://www.google.com/analytics/ is a free web analytics tool, set this up from within your Adwords account and your CPC dta will be integrated into the results.
  2. The other tool specific to adwords is the conversion tracker free with every adwords account. After you have created and setup your adwords account, simply click the conversion tracker link under the campaign management tab or click here https://adwords.google.com/select/convtrackingsignup and sign in to your account. Check the “lead” box and click next. Click continue one more time. The rest of the instructions are self explanatory.

While Google AdWords should not be your only advertising campaign, managed correctly it can be a significant part of your campaign. Google AdWords can certainly help send those important targeted searchers to your website.

Elixir Systems is a full service search engine marketing company specializing in organic search engine optimization services, online public relations management and paid search or PPC management. For more information visit Elixir Systems

Posted in Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

SEO Tools

SEO tools are useful and can help you to develop and refine your campaign. We offer a variety of free tools that can help you keep your SEO on track.

Link Popularity Checker and Link Quality Assessment

This is a great tool to help you analyze the links to your site. Links play a vital role in good organic search engine rankings. Not only is link popularity important, the quality of those links is also very important. Use the free Link Popularity Checker and Link Quality Checker tool to find out the necessary statistics on your links and your competitor’s links.

The tool includes information on inbound links, deep links, directory links, and your search engine indexing statistics.

Add a link to this useful tool from your own site by adding the following code:

<a href=”http://www.elixirsystems.com/tools/linkpopularity.php”>Link Popularity Checker and Link Quality Assessment Tool</a>

Use the tool to look at your current statistics and the statistics of your competitors now.

Social Tagging Tool

Social tagging is creating a buzz as a way to create publicity for your sites content and increase your inbound links. However submitting your information to these sites can be time consuming and hard work. We have made it easier for you! Use this tool to automatically submit your content.

Add a link to this useful tool from your own site by adding the following code:

<a href=”http://www.elixirsystems.com/tools/sociable/”>Social Tagging Tool</a>

Or even use the tool to allow users to tag your site:

<a href=”http://www.elixirsystems.com/tools/sociable/?URL=www.yoursitename.com”>Tag This Page</a>

Use the tool to submit your site to social tagging sites.

WhoIs Lookup and Monitor

Check on the current whois information for other sites. This will give you the owner of the domain name and contact information. It can also be used to compare current information with previous records.

Add a link to this useful tool from your own site by adding the following code:

<a href=”http://www.elixirsystems.com/tools/whois.php”>WhoIs Lookup and Monitor Tool</a>

Use the tool to look at whois information of your company and your competitors now.

Posted in Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

HTML Meta Tags - What are they and how do you use them on your website?

What are they and how do you use them on your website?

By Dylan Downhill
Originally authored: 10 May 2004
Update: 13 July 2006

Below is a collection of the most useful tags found in a document <HEAD> section. It was inspired by an article I read that mentioned some of these tags but didn’t say why you included them, what they did and what options were available for the tag.

As background, meta tags were originally included to aid early search engines to summarize and categorize web pages correctly. Unfortunately everyone figured out that by optimizing their meta tags they could receive better rankings. As more sites started using over-optimized (spammed) meta tags, their usefulness for categorizing web pages diminished and most of the major search engines now treat them with little importance in their rankings.

This might seem the death of meta tags, however they have been extended and expanded through HTML 4.0 and still serve a purpose, though most are not for ranking in the SERPs.

TITLE Tag

This tag tells the search engines what your page is all about. It is probably the most important tag in the <head> section of your document. This field is often displayed in search engines results so should provide a good overview of the page (and of course have your main keyword in it).

<TITLE>Red Widgets for Sale</TITLE>

HTTP-EQUIV Tags

META tags with an HTTP-EQUIV attribute are equivalent to HTTP headers. Typically, they control the action of browsers, and may be used to refine the information provided by the actual headers. Tags using this form should have an equivalent effect when specified as an HTTP header, and in some servers may be translated to actual HTTP headers automatically or by a pre-processing tool.

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html;charset=iso-8859-1″>

This describes the language and format the document is in. Type indicates the type of content within the document (i.e. HTML, XML, etc). The charset indicates the character set. This meta tag is meant to override the content type preconfigured in both the server and the browser, however this does not always work as expected.

<meta http-equiv=”expires” content=”0″>

The date and time after which the document should be considered expired. The date field should read ‘Mon, 10 Apr 2004 14:32:39 GMT”. An invalid value (such as ‘0′) will be taken as meaning expire immediately and is useful to stop a browser caching a document.

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Style-Type” content=”text/css”>

Specifies the default style sheet language for a document.

NAME Tags

Intended for the search engines to read and index, the following tags should always be included

<meta name=”distribution” content=”global”>

Ensure any page you want seen by the searching public is global.

<meta name=”author” content=”name”>

Who owns the site, or who designed the site. Set “name” to the name of the author of the document. Separate multiple authors with commas.

<meta name=”copyright” content=”Copyright 2004 www.ElixirSystems.com”>

Copyright information.

<meta name=”description” content=”text”>

Include your description of the site or page in the “text” field. To maximize your search engine ranking, be sure to use keywords within your description, but do not overstuff.

<meta name=”keywords” content=”keywords, another keyword, 2->4 keywords “>

For more information on keywords see the articles in March and April 2004.

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow, noodp “>

Tell the search engine robot to index and follow your document, this doesn’t mean that it will, it just gives the spiders permission.

One source the search engines use to generate titles and descriptions they show in the search engine results is DMOZ - the Open Directory Project, or ODP. Sometimes this results in less than enticing results being displayed. By adding the ‘noodp’ robots tag to the top of your files the search engines that support this tag will not use the DMOZ title and descriptions.

<meta name=”revisit-after” content=”30 days”>

This tag is not used by any search engine and should be avoided. Most of the major search engine spiders will index a page depending on the frequency of update - if you want a page indexed more often then update it more often.

<meta name=”rating” content=”text”>

Use “text” to indicate the rating of the site.

Useful Template

To save you cutting and pasting the above individually, below is everything together with the most useful options set and in their suggested order:

<title>Red Widgets for Sale</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Description”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”keywords”>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Style-Type” content=”text/css”>
<meta http-equiv=”expires” content=”30 days”>
<meta name=”author” content=”Dylan Downhill”>
<meta name=”copyright” content=”Copyright 2006 www.elixirsystems.com”>
<meta name=”distribution” content=”global”>
<meta name=”rating” content=”Safe For Kids”>
<meta name=”robots” content=”noodp”>Introduction to the most common HTML meta tags, their uses and their common attributes. Extended to include the new noodp tag.

Posted in Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Trademark Infringement and Pay-per-Click (PPC) Advertisers

Online brand names and trademarks are not fully protected by law. Competitors often use underhand tactics to infringe on brand or trademarks.

Trademarks distinguish your brands from your competitor’s brands. They reflect on your reputation and your identity. Successful brands and trademarks are the results of serious investment of time and capital. The goal is to give you an advantage over your competitors.

Trademark infringement issues are of great concern to online Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertisers. It is estimated that twenty percent (20%) of all searches online are trademark searches. Businesses around the world are losing millions of dollars because of trademark infringements. It also drives the price of PPC ads upwards.

While 1 in 5 searches for trademark terms may seem high, most conversions do not originate from trademarked terms. A study by comScore and Yahoo Search Marketing (Overture) found most buyers do not search by manufacturer or product name. Rather, buyers use broad search terms that do not include a manufacturer’s name. Broad search terms account for 70% of total searches and 60% of total conversions.

Companies often bid on the brand names of their competitors. This means that when a searcher types in your brand name the ads for your competitors appear. They click on your competitor’s site thinking it is related to your site. This is basically a form of bait and switch fraud, which offers your customers an alternative brand to your product.

Currently it is possible to stop all advertisers from bidding on the terms within Yahoo and MSN. Google is the only one of the top three search engines that still maintains a strong stance in allowing advertisers to bid on trademarked search terms -as long as the trademarked term is not used within the advertiser’s ad-copy.

Defending Your Brand Against Trademark Violations

To defend against trademark violations it is advisable to conduct search audits at least once every month. The search audits should include:

• Organic Search Results
• Paid Search Results
• PPC Contextual Ads

If there are sites listed that use your trademark look at both the questionable result that is listed and also the site displayed in the result. When looking over the possible violator’s site, don’t just look over the visible content on the site; look over the code as well to uncover hidden text, image alt tags, and keyword meta tags that may include your trademarked names.

There is also the possibility that they may be using a cloaked page, which includes your trademark. To check this out, you will need to view the search engine’s cached page on file.

If there is evidence of a trademark violation document all of your findings by dating the violation as well as the site owner’s complete contact information. Obtain Whois information for the site. For both organic and paid results, use a “screen capture” of the page displaying the mark infringement. For mark infringements that are visible on a website, save the entire page’s code as an .htm file. Once you have all of this information documented, you should send your findings to the appropriate search engine.

You also have the option to take legal action. In this case you should present your complete set of records to your legal counsel. You may want to gather evidence by hiring a third party to collect evidence against the infringer of your trademark or copyrighted material.

Individual Search Engine’s Policy on Trademarks

Yahoo on Trademarks:“On March 1, 2006, Yahoo! Search Marketing will modify its editorial guidelines regarding the use of keywords containing trademarks. Previously, we allowed competitive advertising by allowing advertisers to bid on third-party trademarks if those advertisers offered detailed comparative information about the trademark owner’s products or services in comparison to the competitive products and services that were offered or promoted on the advertiser’s site.

In order to more easily deliver quality user experiences when users search on terms that are trademarks, Yahoo! Search Marketing has determined that we will no longer allow bidding on keywords containing competitor trademarks.”

MSN AdCenter on Trademarks“Microsoft requires all advertisers to agree that they will not bid on keywords, or use in the text of their advertisements, any word whose use would infringe the trademark of any third party or would otherwise be unlawful or in violation of the rights of any third party”.

Google Adwords on Trademarks:“Google takes allegations of trademark infringement very seriously and, as a courtesy, we’re happy to investigate matters raised by trademark owners. Also, our Terms and Conditions with advertisers prohibit intellectual property infringement by advertisers and make it clear that advertisers are responsible for the keywords they choose to generate advertisements and the text that they choose to use in those advertisements.”

Solution or More Problems

If all search engines move toward a trademark policy standard, it would offer many benefits to both advertisers and searchers. This standard would be good for marketers who would have to be more creative in their copy creation creating increased demand for qualified marketers which would translate into higher fees. Search engines hosting the ads would maintain revenue levels, but online public relations firms may lose out as they would not be required to police search engines for their clients with trademarks. Finally, the trademark owner would continue to be protected and user experience would not be affected.

Trademark Case Study

A Google Adwords client, who is a leader in the very competitive Network Marketing field, recently noticed a surge of infringements against their trademark which was being used in competitor ad copy on the Google Network. Competition within the Network Marketing industry is extremely competitive and aggressive.

The client became aware that their competitors were bidding on their trademarked search terms. This caused the cost to secure top positions for their ads to skyrocket from an initial $2.00 per click to $15.00 per click. Monthly expenditures increased from $1,200 to nearly $30,000. The estimated budget increased to $500,000+ for the year. Control of the top ad space in Google was their primary objective in order to dominate the ad-space for their branded trademarked term.

As advisors to the client we were reluctant to suggest that they increase their spending especially in light of Yahoo’s new trademark policy. Given the level of aggression by the competitors and the extortionate cost been borne by the client, there was only one solution and that was to stop all advertisers from bidding on the terms.

Is it right that a business owner has to spend $500,000+ to buy their own branded name – a name that has already cost them millions of dollars to build? This is $500,000+ in revenue for Google which is being generated by a policy that disavows elementary business ethics. Yahoo and MSN have recognized the injustice of such a slippery-slope policy and have taken steps to change it.

Because Google lives and dies by a “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” credo, Google did not treat this policy uniquely. We had no alternative but to advise the client that we could not help them any further and their only option was to resort to legal action against Google if Google was going to continue to allow competitors to use our client’s trademark within their ad-copy who were deliberately trying to confuse the searchers who were searching on our client’s trademarked terms.

One part of Google’s guidelines is that it advises that trademark holders to take the matter up with individual advertisers. In many cases this is impossible because of private registrations and foreign-based companies. The additional costs in time, material and money are again absorbed by the trademark owner, if trademark owners have to send cease and desist orders to all infringers. Which begs the question, “what number of trademark infringers would respond to such an order?”

The conclusion is that protection from classic bait and switch infringement tactics does not seem to apply to the Internet. The obvious solution is for Google to create two-pronged approach: trademark owners allowing or not allowing trademarked terms to be bid on in Google would have to be indexed in a database which would automatically grant or deny the use of a Trademarked term to a Google advertiser.

Contact the Search Engines

You can also contact the search engines directly if you believe an advertiser is infringing on your trademark. The respective search engine contact information is below.

Google
adwords-support@google.com
Google Inc.
Attn: Google AdWords, Trademark Complaints
2400 Bayshore Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Yahoo! Search Marketing
trademarkconcern-ysm@yahoo-inc.com.
Formerly: Overture Services, Inc.
Attn: Business & Legal Affairs - Trademarks
74 N. Pasadena Ave., 3rd Floor
Pasadena, California 91103
Fax: 626 685-5601

Microsoft Corporation
Online Trademark Concern form
Attn: MSN Search Trademark Concerns
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
USA

Trademark Infringement Resources

• International Trademark Association www.inta.org
• American Patent & Trademark Law Center www.patentpending.com
• Internet patent, copyright, trademark, and legal issues www.bitlaw.com
• Trademarks on the Internet www.bitlaw.com/trademark/internet.html

Elixir Systems is a full service search engine marketing company specializing in organic search engine optimization services, online public relations management and paid search or PPC management. For more information visit Elixir Systems

Posted in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) | No Comments »

Pay per Click’s New Challenger - MSN AdCenter

Look out Google Adwords (GAW) and Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM). A new opportunity for lowering costs, better targeting and better conversions is quickly approaching.

YSM (formerly Overture) has lost Microsoft, a key partner in their search network. MSN use to display YSM ads within MSN search results, but this is no longer the case. To add salt to the wound, their onetime partner is now a competitor. Microsoft’s newly released PPC offering is poised to stir up the Pay Per Click (PPC) arena by displaying MSN ads in MSN Search results dubbed, MSN AdCenter.

Feel free to discuss this on our blog ‘Insights into search for Business’.

Currently, MSN is in the first phase of its official launch. However, in the spirit of previous Microsoft releases, it is still a little “buggy.” Expect this to be refined as time progresses. In the initial testing phase, MSN AdCenter was pilot tested in France and Singapore during the third quarter of 2005. The results from the tests were favorable. Following the success of this initial test, MSN AdCetner went into beta testing in the United States during the fourth quarter of 2005.

After using MSN AdCenter upon its official release in May 2006, my personal opinion is the PPC results are great (lower costs, high click through rates and good conversions). I also am beginning to prefer the usability of the system itself in setting up ads and keywords. GAW was my personal favorite in regards to usability, but MSN is beginning to take the cake as it continually improves from its initial release.

The other benefit that MSN’s entry into the PPC arena may offer to the PPC industry as a whole would be lower costs brought about by increased competition. This means that larger advertisers can potentially lower budgets by divesting from their GAW and YSM budgets and reallocating that money into MSN AdCenter. However, with MSN’s current traffic share being low compared to Google or Yahoo, this may not occur until MSN becomes more widely used amongst searchers.

MSN Adcenter has improved targeting compared to GAW and YSM. GAW and YSM both provide geographical targeting, but they don’t have demographic targeting features. With MSN AdCenter targeting, advertisers are able to specify geographic settings and demographic settings by gender and age group. Additionally, for optimizing conversions, advertisers are able to choose the days and times to run their ads. This may include times the business is open to take calls or times known for best conversions based on existing sales data. Coincidentally, GAW recently introduced day-parting in a recent update on June 16, 2006. Advertisers can also use the MSN AdLab tools (http://adlab.msn.com) to source keywords for use in search campaigns as well as behavioral analysis tools based on demographics.

These MSN AdCenter features are useful, but what really makes MSN unique is in its ability to easily setup one ad for many keywords through dynamic text based on four parameters: URL {param1} Ad Text{param2}, AdText {param3} and dynamic keyword insertion {keyword:}.

The URL Parameter, is the parameter you can enter at the end of your url: yoururl.com/{param1}. You would then set your {param1} per keyword as {/?item-landing-page.html} This allows advertisers to have a different landing page for every keyword. This is a useful feature for e-commerce advertisers with a diverse catalog, travel sites that advertise different location destinations, and ticket sites advertising different show venues.

The ad text parameters two and three {param2}, {param3} allows advertisers to create dynamic ads unique to each keyword, but different to the actual keyword used, as in {keyword:} which uses the actual keyword the searcher has entered into their search query. This past weekend I setup a campaign for a hotel reservation site where the keywords totaled nearly 3,000. Setting up a similar campaign would have taken me countless hours with GAW (various adgroups and ads) and YSM (categories and setting up one ad for every keyword). However, with the ability to enter this information into a csv file to import into this account, it took less than a couple hours to setup the entire campaign.

GAW offers dynamic text, but only dynamic keyword insertion {keyword:}. GAW’s dynamic keyword insertion allows advertisers to create an ad to display multiple keywords. And with YSM, you can click the copy title and description for all ads. However, creating just one ad and changing it with parameters better targets an ad for improved click through rates. These parameters keep each ad unique to each keyword.

As good as the features are in MSN AdCenter, there are also some problems. The problems I have noticed so far have been its inability to render correctly in the FireFox browser causing it to crash or “freeze.” The reporting area’s usability leaves much to be desired, but has been updated and is a lot more functional than its initial rendition. Also, you are not able to add capital letters within the displayed URL. This is a feature of both GAW and YSM.

Additionally and probably due to the program’s infancy, MSN AdCenter does not have a certification process allowing PPC management experts to certify they are a qualified expert in managing MSN AdCenter accounts. This provides credibility for search engine marketing agencies and for MSN AdCenter. To compete with GAW and YSM, both of which offer certification to advertising professionals, MSN will have to adopt a similar program. Thus search marketers can help in the growth of MSN AdCenter by offering it to their advertising client base. Microsoft is big in certification with its software offerings, so certification with MSN AdCenter is probably inevitable as opposed to my wishful thought.

You may be new to PPC or an experienced professional, if you have not used MSN AdCenter yet or have reservations about it; you will want to give it a try before overall costs’ per click begin to increase. With the dynamic text abilities and demographic targeting, I personally have never achieved better click through rates with any other PPC search engine than I have with MSN AdCenter. Although the total number of clicks pale in comparison to GAW or even YSM for that matter, when it comes down to targeting quality traffic, MSN AdCenter is poised to be the best and most revered amongst PPC professionals.

Elixir Systems is a full service search engine marketing company specializing in organic search engine optimization services, online public relations management and paid search or PPC management. For more information visit Elixir Systems

Posted in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) | No Comments »

Social Networks - Search Engine Marketing for Web2.0

There are few Search Engine Marketers who would debate that most community based websites are favored within Search Engine Results’ Pages or SERP. These Web2.0 sites also have high Google Page Ranks. Links from these could help increase your site’s Google Page Rank while also boosting your site in the SERPs of most search engines if done properly. Within this article you can find how your site can benefit from utilizing social networks as part of your SEM for web2.0 strategy.

Feel free to discuss this on our blog ‘Insights into search for Business’.

Social networks are getting a lot of attention these days including Wikipedia, del.icio.us and MySpace. Along with the buzz, these sites are also generating a lot of traffic! How can you integrate links for these types of social network sites into your search engine marketing program? While there are an increasing number of social networks, this article will stick to the above as they are kings of their domains so to speak.

I recently had the opportunity to attend Search Engine Strategies in New York City this past February, 2006. While attending a session in regards to community marketing tactics using both Wikipedia and tagging, the panel asked the audience, “Who here knows what Wikipedia and tagging are?” less than half the room raised their hands.

Let me give you an overview of these concepts.

Wikipedia is a free community content driven encyclopedia. I have included an excerpt about Wikipedia from their about section located at About Wikipedia

“Begun in 2001, Wikipedia has rapidly grown into the largest reference website on the Internet. The content of Wikipedia is free, written collaboratively by people from all around the world. This website is a wiki, which means that anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer can edit, correct, or improve information throughout the encyclopedia, simply by clicking the edit this page link (with a few minor exceptions such as protected articles).”

Your benefits of using Wikipedia as an online marketing strategy are various. To begin with, your submitted content about your product or company may be very short and simple to begin with. As your content ages and more members view and contribute to your content with edit revisions, your content submission will grow and grow. For example, your submission may start out as a forty word brief that may turn into a multi-page article. Additionally, Wikipedia has a good Google Page Rank of 9 which will help boost your website’s PR with a quality backlink from your submitted content. Finally, using keywords that relate to your site in your contribution will assist you in controlling more space within the search engine results’ pages for your particular brand, product or name. For example, doing a Google Search (at the time this article was written)for the term “Microsoft” returns a Wikipedia content entry about Microsoft in the tenth position of the Google SERP for “Microsoft”.

You should only submit content about a famous person, a patented product your company invented, a trademarked brand, famous places, etc. When you write your content you will want to write from an extremely neutral viewpoint. Don’t write all sorts of features and benefits; write more factual based information related to your subject. Your focus needs to be the community and not your subject. Tread lightly, the community is helpful to assist you in producing additional content, but be careful of keyword spamming and link spamming.

Although there are many benefits to using Wikipedia for SEM, there are also just as many caveats to using it. Submitting content to Wikipedia is a double-edged sword. You will only want to contribute to Wikipedia if your product or service is of relevance to the community. Using spammy techniques in your content or submitting an entry that has no real value such as “another affiliate website” could have the opposite of desired effect by producing negative feedback about your brand or product from the community.

Tagging on the other hand doesn’t have quite the negative drawbacks as posting to Wikipedia.

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site where members contribute links based on tags that anyone can search. I have included their about page found at here below:

“What is del.icio.us?

del.icio.us is a collection of favorites - yours and everyone else’s. Use del.icio.us to:

• Keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music, restaurant reviews, and more on del.icio.us and access them from any computer on the web.
• Share favorites with friends, family, and colleagues.
• Discover new things. Everything on del.icio.us is someone’s favorite - they’ve already done the work of finding it. Explore and enjoy.”

There are a few simple techniques for commercial tagging through community type sites such as del.icio.us: create bookmark worthy content or link bait, get your tags in front of the right people or choose the right category, give your created tags only one self generated bump in del.icio.us, rinse and repeat about once a month. Below is an excerpt from del.icio.us to help you answer what various parts of tags are:

Posts

When a user saves an item on del.icio.us, it is posted to the front page as well as the tag page for each chosen tag. A sample is below explaining the various information pieces:

Here is a del.icio.us example listing under the tag “web 2.0″:

O’Reilly — What Is Web 2.0  save this

by Scottcard to web2.0 oreilly article reference … saved by 2938 other people .

You will first notice the title with the link to the site, next is an option to save the link to your tags. Secondly, you see a Username Scottcard. Here you can click the username to see Scottcard’s tags. Next you can click on the next links to see other related-sites within those tags. Lastly, you will see a highlighted link where you can view the members who have saved this site.

The good and the bad of tagging is that you will receive good quality backlinks to your site and increase visibility. The bad is that the majority of the time your tags will be removed from community members because the members are technically savvy and intolerant of any type of commercial push. Choose your keywords wisely and make sure your tag is in the right place and contributes to the community. Other tagging sites to consider are: technorati.com. There are many others, but these are the ones that matter.

I see tagging or social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us gaining in popularity within the next three years as blogs did two years ago. Yahoo has already taken notice by purchasing del.icio.us and Flickr. Digg and Furl are also making headway. Other sources to consider are the social network sites for developing a web2.0 SEM strategy.

MySpace is the current king of social networks, as it is literally a social-space network with 2.5 times more daily users than Google (psst, this is a huge untapped market). The domain dates back to 1999 where it was originally an online hard-drive of sorts. The current rendition took hold in 2003 making MySpace barely three years old. The main demographic is made up of teens to 20-somethings. The music industry is currently using MySpace as a marketing tool, not the labels themselves, but the bands. For example, Pearl Jam is announcing their upcoming release for May with sample songs and concert date announcements. One of their sample songs from their upcoming albums is one of the most played songs across the entire MySpace network. Independent film makers have also taken notice. In February 2006, amateur filmmaker David Lehre released a short film called MySpace: The Movie. This short film has quickly become a hit, registering over six million views following its release.

Benefiting from MySpace traffic is pretty straight forward. You will want to create a user profile and post links to your company or websites such as blogs, feeds, etc. Profile note, you can post html code in any field regarding your profile. Next, create your social pipeline of users and keep the demographic inline with any product or link you wish to shamelessly promote in the future. You don’t want to get spammy here either. The downside would be getting your user profile terminated from MySpace or members posting negative comments within your profile. Again, tread lightly by thinking neutral and keep the benefit of the community in mind.

The opportunity costs associated with community based SEM are very high. However, tagging in particular may be time prohibitive for most organizations as it requires a lot of trial and error. Tagging can seem like a waste of time as most tagging submissions will be removed by community members who find your submission “spammy”. Time spent on tagging isn’t a problem for most sole proprietors, but can be costly to your employer who is left with little equitable return to show for your time spent.

Utilizing Web2.0 sites such as Wikipedia, del.icio.us and MySpace, will prove effective for your business if done properly. Remember to tread lightly, don’t use “spammy” techniques and stay neutral keeping the benefit of the community at heart in your content development. Doing so will help your business to avoid a negative backlash toward your brand from the community you are developing content for.

You can tag or social-bookmark this article by clicking the following link below:
Social bookmark this page

Posted in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) | No Comments »

Moving With the Times on the Internet

Imagine taking a trip to the mall. You enter it and start shopping. The first store you approach is a computer store. The one next door is also a computer store. You find this unusual. You walk around. The entire mall is filled with 100’s of stores, all of them computer stores, and all of them selling identical products with identical store fronts. You start thinking about this. How can they compete against each other? How do they survive?

In the search engine optimization field we come across this type of situation all the time except for us it concerns web sites as opposed to actual physical stores. Today people still have the expectation that they can have an idea, create a web site and the world will beat a path to their door. They put up a site selling the same products or services as hundreds of others and wait to get rich. Any sane person can see that this could not possibly work. But we see it again and again. The internet is cluttered with this type of business model.

It’s obvious that these people have unrealistic expectations of what the Internet can now offer. They are living in the past. Six years ago it was relatively easy to get highly ranked as there were fewer sites which meant less competition. Relatively few of these sites were optimized making it easy for an optimized site to get high placement in the search engine results.

Since that time the number of web sites has increased dramatically and there has been a steady growth in the need for acquiring high search engine placement. High rankings are still possible but it is a lot trickier and requires skilled optimization expertise to get ranked. This has led to an increase in unethical companies who will use any short term “spamming” method to get their clients ranked. The result is that many of these companies and their clients are getting banned from search engines. These spamming companies are partially to blame for the fact that it is getting harder and harder to get ranked in the Search Engines. In an effort to get rid of their spam techniques search engines have to keep finding new ways to block them. An unfortunate consequence of the fact that the search engines are required to protect the integrity of their results is that many hard working legitimate web site owners get hit with the changes and lose their rankings in the process. Last November Google did the now infamous “Florida update” designed to clean up spam and in the process literally put many online services out of business. Unintentional on Google’s part but disastrous for many ethical web sites owners especially since it happened in November just before peak holiday season for online store owners.

The other major factor involved in getting high rankings is the rapid growth in the number of indexed pages making the web so much bigger and making the search engines job of returning relevant results so much harder. The new Microsoft search engine preview is showing millions of pages competing for search and just recently Google has doubled the size of its index from 4 to 8 billion pages. Those that stay flexible and continue to evolve will make it. The rest will go out of business.

Most new traditional businesses are considered start-ups for the first three years of existence. The lure of high yield and fast results for online businesses has resulted in many want to be entrepreneurs. Up until the present time many entrepreneurs have viewed an online business as a way around the hard work and financial investment of traditional bricks and mortar businesses. This does not work anymore. Now a sustained effort is required both physically and financially to get an online business to succeed. This is true for even the best new business idea. For an online business to succeed in the current climate a much more “bricks and mortar” approach needs to be adapted. A new online business will need a well thought out business plan, market research, a clear understanding of their demographics and funding.

So what about our companies that are involved in search engine placement? Search engine optimization companies will have to adapt in order to survive. Search engine optimization is vital for businesses that are serious about an online presence. However, these businesses should be made aware that it is going to cost money and be a long term process. Online business and traditional business are getting more and more alike!

The Internet is finally moving from a tactical marketing sideline to the core of large-scale, major marketing strategies. Natural SEO and paid SEM will become integrated together into an Internet or online marketing strategy. This field will incorporate business, marketing and technical strategy.

Larger companies in traditional businesses now bring in an increasingly greater percentage of their revenues online, and they are transforming their businesses in the process. Online companies that are serious about making it will have to dedicate time and resources to the cause. In the past mid-sized and large corporations had advertising budgets to give to their advertising agency for their services. The smartest will ensure that there is a budget set aside for Internet development within these organizations which will be given to dedicated Internet specialists to handle their search engine placement for specific brands and markets.

So the glory days of the Internet are over. However, the effort and financial resources needed to get search engine placement are still worth it. It is a fraction of the cost of traditional media marketing methods such as advertising, TV, radio, print, etc. It is also the way to ensure that your drive for competitive advantage will continue both in the short term and into the future.

Posted in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) | No Comments »

Additional Marketing Strategies to Compliment your SEO Campaign

Many of our clients focus to a large extent on getting their sites ranked in the search engines using search engine optimization (SEO). They then come to me and ask what other types of marketing they can use to increase the effectiveness of their SEO campaign?

The first thing that I point out is that a SEO campaign should just be part of an overall business marketing plan. And this marketing plan should relate closely to the business plan. There are many things that can be done market your website. Here are a few examples of marketing ideas you may find useful.

One of the most obvious is a start up a Pay-per-Click (PPC) campaign. Try experimenting with PPC and find out how effective it can be for your site. Be very careful though as it is easy to lose control of your spending.

A monthly newsletter is a great way to gain exposure and keep your name in front of potential clients. A newsletter sign-up is a popular ‘call to action.’ Getting sign ups for your newsletter is an excellent way to develop and cultivate new leads.

A monthly optimized press release campaign continually gets your latest news out in front of people. As search engines pick up these releases it also helps you to get found for targeted keywords. And of course your news can get picked up by traditional media outlets such as newspapers, magazines, TV etc., as well as online outlets.

It is also a good idea that you network online with industry groups or user groups and forums. Networking is such an important part of marketing. This can help get you established as an authority for your type of business.

Develop articles relating to your specialization which will be of interest to potential clients. Publish these on your website and submit them to industry publications. Again we are establishing your authority and building your brand.

Start up your own Blog and write about your subject of expertise. This has two benefits. It gives your target audience lots of up-to-date and interesting information. It also keeps you on the cutting edge of the news in your industry. An effective Blog does need a lot of work though. Look for syndication opportunities.

Attend your industry tradeshows either as an attendee or exhibitor. Meet people, discuss the latest industry developments and get your name out there!

Develop an affiliate program for your business. This will take the pressure off your own marketing efforts and increase you total sales potential. Your affiliates market and sell your product.

There are many marketing options that you can use along side your SEO efforts. Bear in mind that any type of marketing effort relies on a clear understanding of your target audience and their behaviors. It is all about building your name and your brand. SEO is an important part of an online marketing plan. So be creative and think ‘out of the box.’ to develop a unique total marketing strategy.

Posted in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) | No Comments »

Understanding Search Engine Marketing

The use of search engines to help surf the Web has become commonplace. Everyone has a favorite, whether it be Google, Yahoo!, or AOL. And many business owners have finally discovered the ability to advertise on these engines to increase traffic and sales to their site. For beginners there are many terms bandied around relating to these search engines which can be confusing. And to add to the confusion it is becoming increasingly difficult to decipher between all of the “experts” and their advice that is so freely available. Perhaps the greatest confusion revolves around the meaning of “search engine optimization” and “search engine marketing.”

Search engine optimization is the act of altering a Web site so that it performs better in the ‘free’ organic, crawler-based listings of search engines. Organic search listings cannot be purchased. Web sites must be altered to be search engine friendly and to encourage the search engines to rank the Web pages for keywords and phrases that are relevant to the Web site and Web pages.

Search engine marketing is the act of marketing a Web site via search engines, whether it’s creating specific landing pages for your site, purchasing paid advertising on the results pages, or a combination of these and other search engine-related activities, including natural optimization.

The Importance of Keywords

Whether ranking through the ‘free’ organic listings or through paid search media, the most important step that most site owners have trouble comprehending is the importance of keywords. The key is to find keywords that are actually converting into sales. For example if you are a car dealer in Phoenix, does it really matter if you rank number one for “cars” in Google? Therefore, taking the time to use available technology to help define which keywords are used by your target market and really drive your desired results is really the first step in any search engine marketing program.

Search Engine Optimization

There are numerous tips and tools available to help you better optimize your site for the engines. Overall, search engine optimization is composed of programming elements that exist in three places: on the page, on the site, and off the site. In general, the consensus is that one must pay attention to:

• Title, Description and Keyword Meta Tags
• Site Structure and Programming
• Page Content Development
• Link Strategy

Search engines use complex algorithms to determine how they spider, index, and rank sites. These algorithms are constantly changing. While you can follow the various tips and resources to do it yourself, please keep in mind that gaining rank is a long-term process that requires consistent attention. It’s not just a one-off deal. Therefore you may want to consider outsourcing to an SEO expert. This is especially true if your site is a complex, dynamically driven e-Commerce site.

Search Engine Marketing

The search engine marketing space has become highly competitive. Paid search media is an advertising program where listings are guaranteed to appear in response to particular search terms, with higher ranking typically obtained by paying more than other advertisers. Paid placement listings can be purchased from a portal or a search network. For example, the listings a user sees in “boxes” at the top and along the left hand side of the page in Google are all paid advertising spots.

The major players in the space include Overture and Google Adwords. But, many forget to utilize the third tier players, which for smaller niche sites, sometimes produce even better results. Those include: Kanoodle, FindWhat, and Enhance.com.

Search Engines and your Business

People seem to think that they are somehow entitled to top ranking in the search engines. There is also the perception that these engines are government supplemented services. The truth is that they are independent businesses and so are responsible for profit and loss. This means that they decide how they run their business and how they rank Web sites.

What does this mean for your business? You should start by developing a search engine strategy. This can be done by utilizing ’search engine optimization,’ ’search engine marketing,’ or a combination of both. You should aim to educate yourself on these systems and determine how you can use them to further your online business. The goal is to increase your business visibility within the search engines and bring ‘qualified’ traffic to your site. The result will be increased sales which will ensure the continued success of your online business.

Posted in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) | No Comments »