What about Yahoo! Advertising?

At the end of July 2010, Yahoo! announced the first part of the merger agreement between Yahoo! and Bing which means that starting in the Fall of 2010, Yahoo! search results will now be showing paid advertising from Bing Advertisers. What does this mean for Yahoo! advertising? As the spots fill up on the first page search results how does Yahoo! turn a profit? Last July I wrote an article on the Yahoo Microsoft Merger and in the article was discussed that this would happen, but Yahoo! would receive up to 88% of the profit on the advertising as part of the agreement. This is more then likely hike up the pricing for Bing advertising since the advertisers will now have access to both second and third place search engines via one advertising portal. This is going to improve ROI for both companies and get almost 20% of the search share to the advertisers that still advertise with the companies. In my eyes, Yahoo! just signed up for Microsoft Ad Sense, their new source of revenue! So is this merger a competition of search share, or revenue share. Concentrate on the user and worry about their needs in what they are looking for. Improve the already terrible algorithm to incorporate relevant search results at the top of search results rather then spamming the page with the highest paying advertiser. Thats how people get scammed!

Google’s Take on the Yahoo Bing Merger

Google has over 80% of the search market, which means they get 80% of the customers that are looking for something on the Internet. That is higher chance at success and failure for advertisers with a limited online marketing budget. Regardless, they have 80% which doesn’t really make them scared, they have done this before with the acquisition of Ask.com advertising rights and search results and AOL.

Facebook Social Media Optimization

The newest form of the “original AOL Instant Messenger” and social media hotspot, Facebook is becoming more and more of a user interface for people everyday.

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, post links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.

Facebook Meta Description Via Homepage

What it doesn’t say is that you can play video games, click on sponsored ads, allow different programs and companies access to your photos and friends list for advertising reasons unless you click otherwise when the default is automatic to allow. You can also start groups and fan sites which other people see you approving or dissaproving. This can be a useful tool when starting a variety of different things, including but not limited to a new website. Starting a group can allow followers the ease of everyday specials, events and news articles without the annoyance of emails, snail mail or even the dreaded phone call.

Facebook Pay-Per-Click

Facebook has a PPC system in place that allows businesses to advertise for a cost per click, but when you think about it do you ever click the ads on the side of your facebook page that you are on? People do love the different social media games that use your friends list as a catalyst for using them in the new game, so if you have a web based game that you created, facebook is a great place to start.

Every business comes to a crossroads where their website isn’t providing the web traffic and sales leads they believe their website is capable of providing. Just like every other aspect of business there are professionals that can provide the services at a much lower cost that of which an actual staffed employee can provide.

Freelance SEO Specialist

Obtaining the services of a freelance SEO has it’s pro’s and con’s and this little list should provide adequate information on what your choices really are.

A freelance SEO may not have all the same qualifications as a reputable Internet Marketing Company or the same work experience with various business industries. With a reputable Internet Marketing Company you may not get the same type of attention you would from a freelance SEO. In this comparison, you could get a lot more bang for your buck by hiring someone that is willing to work for you rather than working for their company. You may hire a big company, but only 1 or 2 people will be doing the work on the website for that company. Hiring a freelance SEO will allow you to get that 1 person to work on your site with no one else to report to allowing you to possibly get some small additions for no additional cost.

Internal SEO Specialist

Instead of hiring a company to take care of all of your internet marketing needs, you may venture into hiring someone with SEO/Internet Marketing experience and bringing them on your staff full time. This just like anything else has it’s pro’s and con’s, bringing on someone full time will ultimately bring more cost to your company. Providing insurance, payments into unemployment and normal full time staff requirements. Hiring may be a pain because you can’t find the right employee for the job, the person with the most experience or possibly even a proven track record of success. Also if you were to hire someone full time to help with your internet marketing they may have no idea what they are doing with SEO and provide you with some bad choices that ultimately hurt your search engine rankings and negatively impact your marketing campaign.

Whether or not you are looking to permanently improve your search engine rankings for your website (most people are looking for permanent) you make your choices carefully just like any other business decision. Remember there isn’t any matriculated programs in schools to teach SEO due to the constant changes in search engine algorithms, so its constantly a moving target.

One of the most widely used forms of paying an SEO or Internet Marketing Specialist, is a small fee for preliminary work being done to the site (mainly to protect the SEO) and a commission for sales on the website is a way to track success and to put value to the work of the SEO.

Google AdWords Campaigns

When choosing to advertise your website on Google AdWords you need to first start out with a campaign. A campaign is a complete advertising group or advertising campaign full of ad groups, keywords and ads. Each campaign you create on Google AdWords has it’s own settings which can include:

• Geo-targets of countries, states and cities
• Demographics from age, sex, gender, income etc.
• Day-Parting or showing your ads at or within specific times
• Languages the ads appear in
• Max CPC (cost-per-click) across the entire campaign
• Choose which networks

1. Content Network, places you on relevant websites participating in the Google AdSense program
2. Google Search, for Google and their search partners
3. Mobile Devices

• Daily Budget
• Scheduling
• Position Preference
• Ad Rotation
• Ad Frequency

These settings for your campaign can be changed or modified at any time and over time you will probably change these settings multiple times.

Google AdWords Ad Groups

After you create the Google Ad Campaign, you are then prompted to make an Ad Group. The ad group is what consists of the keywords and the ads associated with those keywords. From here you can choose your keywords from a broad sense to an exact sense. The difference between broad match and exact match is simple.

Broad Keyword Match is any keyword search performed containing that particular word or words in the search. If you bid on the keyword “steak” any search performed with that word in it will show your ad as long as you meet the min. bid requirements and have enough of a budget and have met the Google Advertising Policy standards.

Exact Keyword Match is any keyword search performed with only the keyword or keyword phrase in the exact order you selected. If you bid on the keyword “buy steaks” your ad will appear when someone searches “buy steaks” onlyas long as you meet the min. bid requirements and have enough of a budget and have met the Google Advertising Policy standards., if they type “steaks buy” your ad will NOT appear.

Keyword Phrase Match is any keyword search performed with the keywords you selected only in any order.

What to look for in a CMS (content management system)

1. Be able to optimize page titles, meta-description, meta-keywords and text content on each and every page to obtain unique pages.

2. Be able to optimize each and every image (alt attributes).

3. Have a page for conversions (static “thank you” page for purchases) need to install tracking code on each conversion page.

4. Make sure pictures and images are smaller, the larger the page the slower the load time and the lower the rankings because of it.

5. Navigation rollover scripts, other JavaScript-based code, and all CSS scripts should be taken out of the code of each page and put into external files to which each page of the site is referenced. Doing this has several advantages, but one of the most beneficial is that any site’s keywords and content all move up in the code, communicating their importance to the search engines and boosting the site’s relevancy ratings. In other words, this can boost search engine rankings by improving the code to text ratio of the page. This is a simple and relatively inexpensive thing to do, depending on the total number of pages in the site.

* Important *

o It can take a while for the search engines to index a site and the rankings to change for that site. For some search engines, the lag time between the work and seeing results can be as long as six months. Clients need to be patient and have realistic expectations (from sales) regarding the time frame involved with organic (the natural, non paid results) search engine rankings. If the business need for increased search engine prominence is greater than can be met with optimization alone, I recommend adding a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign to the marketing campaign mix to bridge the time. PPC campaigns such as Google’s AdWords can be set up in a matter of a few hours, allowing for immediate results.

Content Piece of the Puzzle (the design)

You get better results if you design with optimization in mind from the beginning. If you incorporate optimization into the very construction of your website, it is much more seamless and genuine than if you build your site and then try to tweak it for optimization. The most search engine friendly sites are straightforward sites built from basic, non-frame, non-Flash, HTML documents. Your site should also use basic HTML links (not links in dropdown flash menus or hidden in fancy animations) as these are most easily followed and indexed by search engines.

First, a site loaded with high-quality content of interest to site users will give them a reason to stay and a reason to come back. After all, the reason they came to the site was to find information. Second, you will receive the added benefit of serving up exactly what the search engines want – content. Search engines will have more information to store about the businesses and products; that information will translate directly into the ranking they give the site for related keyword phrases.

o Each page should contain about 200 words of text content increasing relevancy ratings and thus making optimization of the pages easier to monetize increasing the search engine rankings.

Prominence of Targeted Keyword Phrases – It is not enough to have your keyword phrase(s) somewhere on the web page, the placement and prominence given to them also affects your search engine placement. For example, leading off the site’s first paragraph with your keyword phrase gives it more weight than burying it half way down the page in the middle of a paragraph. Also, using larger font sizes and bolding the text can emphasize its importance and positively affect the page’s ranking for that phrase.

Using keyword phrase(s) in the <h> tags of the site will also improve search engine rankings. Specific use of just one type of header will not be as effective as using multiple <h> tags on the page.

Trademark Keywords?

There are lots of different opinions and different court cases even where the question of whether or not you can use trademark words in advertising campaigns such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. There was a few mentions in those articles about meta-keywords, which is very important when relating to your content. My general rule has always been to insert the keywords that really decide how the page should be optimized for are the ones that are in the content of the page. Sure Google and Yahoo are trademark names, and surely when someone was looking for your site they wouldn’t type in Google and necessarily want to land on your page. The content on your site is probably google related, but not Google itself, so you would need to target a phrase, like in seo case, “How to advertise on Google” would be a good phrase to compete for robotic knowledge from the mother ship or my site which I specialize in MAXIMIZING profitability while keeping cost down. This is a simple way from staying away from trademark infringement in your future.

Keep your description relevant to the content and if need be include the “possible trademark threat” include it. When in doubt, dont do it in SEO, to avoid the problems and possible banishment from search engine results.

Reference:

• http://www.ivanhoffman.com/keywords.html
• http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=42993
• http://tcattorney.typepad.com/ip/2008/06/use-of-trademar.html

Free SEO Tips

Bounce Rates in Search Engine Optimization

I have just spent the last few hours looking at posts from the past few years about bounce rates in Google Analytics and I think that there is a lot of information out there that Google must laugh at.  In this post about bounce rates, he talks about how someone else says it better than he does and he passes on the torch to another useless post about bounce rates.  At least one truth from both of the posts is that a low % is a better %, however breaking them down into what they are for and what they can tell you is completely off kilt.

• Low bounce rate is telling you that people come to your site and at some point and time during their visit, go to another page. Meaning that a low percentage of the people that visit your site only visit the first page.  This doesn’t mean your home page necessarily, it could be a product page if you are an commerce site, or another post within your huge blog.
• High bounce rate means they came, they saw, they left.  No clicks to anywhere else in your site, just viewed the landing page and left.
• There is no time limit on how long a person can stay on the page before clicking to another page, if they click in and click out 2 hours later, it’s a bounce.

If your bounce rate is high, evaluate the type of site that you have, if its a blog, expect people to hit it and forget it.  That is really what a blog is for, to provide available information quick and easy.  That’s why you need to make sure that the content within the pages of your site are right to the point, don’t have too little or too much information.  You don’t want to misinform or bore your site visitors.

Bounce Rates in Pay-Per-Click

There are a few things to think about when you are looking at the bounce rates of your ppc campaign, you have to look at the possibility that your price is too high, product wasn’t really what the searcher wanted, or your page itself doesn’t have enough stickiness to keep them on the page.  When someone is shopping they are more likely to leave the site entirely to “shop around” rather than shop around the site that didn’t provide them with the content they were looking for.  Make sure that your landing page supports the words you are paying for, because even if they click on your site and bounce off, it still costs YOU money! Knowing what to expect before hand does make it easier to swallow, it still doesn’t take away the costs you are going to incur.  Good luck and happy bouncing.

Alright you have your site, you performed your SEO plan to the best of your ability, how do you track the success?  Reading earlier you may have learned how to use Google Webmaster Tools and installed them on your site.  Now you may want to get more into the meat and potatoes of tracking SEO success.  Google Analytics is the easiest and most affordable way to track your results (its free!).

All you need is FTP (File Transfer Protocol) access and you can install a simple code and let the tracking begin.  Install the code between the <body> and <body/> tags in your site.  If you have no clue what you are doing you may want to contact your hosting provider to give them the code that google analytics provides to you after you sign up your site.  Just send them an email that you want them to add it to all the pages of your active site, 24 hours later you will have some data and going forward you will be able to track each visitor to your site.  You can track, IP, city, network, browser type and more!  You can even track when a searcher lands on your site and proceeds to a checkout or maybe even a contact form.  You can track your month to month results to show where you were last month and where you are today.  See how many visits you got today, yesterday, last week or last month.  Look to see what is your most popular page, what page gets the most hits, or how many pages the avg. site visitor views before leaving the site.

You can use Analytics to really gauge how well your SEO campaign is doing, or your PPC program.  Bounce rate is a very important statistic of your site.  This tells you how effective the web pages in your site are for what they are being found under.  Meaning if someone was to search for blue widgets, and found your green widgets page, chances are they are going to leave the page to find a blue widget, giving you a bounce. More to come with bounce rates and how to use Google Analytics.

Did you know that search engines provide search results for other search engines and those search results contain directories, or databases of websites like superpages.com or thomasnet.com?  These databases or directories,  that is a site with drop downs or drill downs to the specific area that you service.  People do use these directories because they are human derived, meaning they  go through approval by an admin before they are put into the directory.  You do have to submit your site, it doesn’t just automatically appear in their search results.  Being listed in a directory for traffic is not an effective way to draw traffic.  Use this as an opportunity to build some sort of link trust within the search engine industry.  If that directory has 50,000 monthly visitors, that’s 50,000 visitors to the site, not your specific industry.  Say if 10%, 5000 visitors per month were potential site visitors  to your industry, where there are over 100 other sites competing for those potential visitors.  10% is a very hopeful number and realistically would be great but isn’t the truth.

Your best bet overall is to have your site in the major search engines and play the SEO game of trying to increase your site rankings for keywords you choose based on the content of your site.  Direct traffic from the major search engines may not wield the kind of conversion rates that the second tier or third tier search engines may have.  However these 2nd and 3rd tier search engines may not have the same amount of traffic that the may have either.  Use both of the options, but just don’t pay for higher position in the lesser engines.  This is just going to cause you to spend a lot of unnecessary money, save it for Google Adwords or Yahoo! PPC.

Today Microsoft announced that they are in agreements with Dell Computers as the primary search engine that would show up automatically on the desktop screens of most new Dell consumer PCs beginning in February.  Their agreement with Verizon will allow them to be the primary search engine for handsets for the next five years.

This move was something that needed to be done in order to keep Google in check with their constant stride to be the only online search engine.  60% of search queries originate from Google, where as Yahoo comes in a steady second with 20% and Microsoft/Live comes in third with 8%.  Even though Internet Explorer comes as the default web browser for all Microsoft OS’s, people still have the opportunity to change their Internet properties default home page to support any search engine they desire, but the people they are targeting are the consumers that don’t necessarily use search engines on a day to day basis.  These are the ever so often search for a pizzeria or restaurant in the area they are in allowing them to provide more opportunities for their paying advertising customers.  Verizon cell phone users will now be faced with MSN/Live search results on their cell phones, which would give MSN customers the opportunity to place ads in front of the potential customer providing them exclusive opportunities to Verizon Wireless customers.

As of right now there is no competition between the search engines, and I do not anticipate this to change anything in the long run.  Since they will have exclusive rights to both Dell and Verizon, they are also going to have to skim some of the advertising costs with the 2 making their profit levels lower, and increasing the cost to advertise on the search engine itself.  Today’s market is at a steady decline with unemployment increasing and job opportunities decreasing giving big business’s less profit and making their companies downsize to keep their doors open.

The Verizon/Alltel merger expected to happen sometime in late 2009 early 2010, was expected to downsize some Alltel locations, which this merger may bring some extra income and extra work for worrisome Alltel employees and maybe even kick start the merger faster than anticipated.  Hopefully this will make life easier for SEO specialists by giving them 3 targets rather than just 2 to focus their SEO efforts.  This would allow more room for trial and error with other markets and search algorithms   and possibly bring unity to how search engines rank their sites.  Ultimately search engines want the searcher to find what they are looking for fairly quickly within a few clicks after their search.