Advertising on Google is still one of the staples of online marketing: pretty much everyone should know how it works and what it can do for their business. But AdWords can be intimidating, with many hidden features that can affect how well your ad works and how much you have to pay. A new infographic from Wordstream makes sense of it all in a … [Read more...]
New AdSense Interface Is A Lesson For Networks
Yesterday was a big day for more than 2 million publishers: Google began the rollout of its new Google AdSense interface. The interface has been four years in development and will be provided in over 200 countries and more than 30 languages. Two questions arise: how is it going to help publishers make more money? And why should other networks be paying attention? The answer … [Read more...]
Headaches Ahead for Yahoo PPC Advertisers
The Microsoft/Yahoo PPC alliance was always going to have teething troubles and give advertisers some headaches. We are gradually learning just where those are going to come from. The most complicated issues are likely to spring from the differences in the way that Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft's adCenter treat keywords. adCenter in general provides much finer control … [Read more...]
Top 5 Takeaways Re. Twitter's New Advertising Platform
Twitter has made its move towards monetization and there are big opportunities for performance advertisers as a result.. In the last 48 hours they have announced a new performance advertising platform, new targeting capabilities via geo-location, and that Twitter now has 105 million registered users with 75% of traffic coming from outside Twitter.com. Let’s explore what … [Read more...]
Raising Your Score
Over the last seven to 10 years, paid search has proven to be a cost effective channel for affiliates and performance marketers alike to drive high quality leads while maintaining strong ROI. In fact, search engine marketing (SEM) frequently represents an inordinate portion of a performance marketer’s business – often more than they care to admit.The decline in … [Read more...]
Lights, Cameras, Action!
Raise your hand if you've heard of Blendtec. I bet you are familiar with Blendtec and I bet I know how you first heard of their blenders - from their viral video series called "Will it blend?" That series, showing iPods and other unusual items being reduced to powder by a powerful blender, serves a strong branding message: If it can annihilate an iPod, it will make quick work … [Read more...]
Content vs. SEO
Hamlet Batista, president and CEO of NEMedia, wants to change your content. He wants to change it so much that he can't wait to get his search team cracking on it. It's his bread and butter. And like any SEO outfit, he claims he can get your site optimized and ranking rapidly. But he also has a passion for words. He wants to respect your content - the carefully crafted … [Read more...]
Skinflint Search Marketing
I admit it - I'm a skinflint. Call me a tightwad, a miser - I don't care. Basically, I'm cheap. And even if you're not cheap by personality, you might need to conserve cash by necessity. If that's your situation, don't despair. The Internet is tailor-made for you. Internet marketing, and search marketing in particular, is the land of the free. So step up, you skinflints, and … [Read more...]
Search Marketing Is Direct Marketing
When I say the word "marketing," what do you think of? Probably some kind of advertising - maybe a TV commercial for Coke. That's brand marketing, and it's gotten the lion's share of attention from marketers for decades. Far fewer people are direct marketers - the folks behind the catalogs and mail solicitations that fill our mailboxes. If you know any direct marketers, you may … [Read more...]
More Ways to Search
Search powerhouse Google has ascended not only to the No. 1 starting place for most Web searches, but the name has become part of the popular consciousness, even spawning the use of its name as a verb. To Google is to discover the globe.That's all about to change and the world of search is about to bust wide open.Not to say that the top three search engines - Google, Yahoo and … [Read more...]
Overcoming Your SEO Fears
Ask nearly everyone and they'll say that search engine optimization is intimidating. Search engine optimization - SEO for short - should be a familiar term and practice for anyone or any commercial company with a website. SEO is what you do to your website to get a higher ranking on search engines,particularly Google,Yahoo and MSN.The higher you rank the more likely someone … [Read more...]
Google Hates Affiliates
Back in January 2005 Google changed its Adwords policy to read, "We'll only display one ad for affiliates and parent companies sharing the same Display URL per search query." Consequently, affiliate arbitragers who used pay-per-click advertising to send traffic directly to their merchants' sites saw their ads disappear overnight. Those who hadn't diversified their incomes by … [Read more...]
Search Marketers Target iPod Users
Discover how your business can leverage podcasts before it's too late.Everyone's talking about podcasts, those audio files downloaded from the Web and played on demand using an Apple iPod or any MP3 media player. Many podcasts are just for fun, but marketers are discovering they're also a promising new way to deliver advertising.In a sense, there's no difference in what you can … [Read more...]
Mining for Keywords
Now that you've set up your search engine marketing campaign and it's chugging along nicely, how do you take things to the next level? You've picked out some good keywords, written some good copy and you're getting a reasonable ROI, but every time you look at your pay-per-click campaigns, you just know there's more that you could be doing to maximize your investment. And you … [Read more...]
Analyze This
Affiliates are capitalizing on the predictable behavioral patterns of consumers by using Web analytics tools to decode customers' habits and boost revenue. So if you're a publisher and want to know who exactly is visiting your site, how different types of visitors come back, what they are looking for when they arrive and what specifically makes them want to leave, you should … [Read more...]