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Search Engine Strategies PPC Roundup
2007-04-14 01:57:00
I'm not quite sure where to start this week as my FeedReader seems to have been overflowing with news from Search Engine Stategies over the last few days. I've picked out the main PPC stories from SES New York in addition to the rest of this weeks pay per click news.Search Engine Strategies Meet the Search Ad Networks - Bruce ClayAdvanced Paid Search Techniques - Bruce ClayAds In A Quality Score World - SERoundtableIn House Big PPC - SERoundtableGetting Traffic From Contextual Ads - SERoundtableLanding Page Testing & Tuning - SERoundtableCreating Compelling Ads - SERoundtableAuditing Paid Listings & Click Fraud Issues - Bruce ClayWeb Analytics & Measuring Success - Bruce ClayAdmitted: "We Do Arbitrage" - TraffickMicrosoft adCenter: Today and Tomorrow - SERoundtableVideo Recap and Reflections on SES - New York 2007 - Pepperjam BlogThis Weeks other PPC news:Google AdWordsThe next step in Google advertising - Official Google BlogA new case study on botnet-based click fraud - Inside Ad...
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AdWords New Features highlighted in account
2007-04-13 20:37:00
I also noticed today a "New Features " heading in the top right-hand corner of my AdWords account which funnily enough links to a list of new features, makes sense! :)Here's the screenshot:-------------------------Searc h Engine Optimisation - Promote your business online, submit for a free website analysis today!
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New AdWords Campaign Summary View
2007-04-13 19:25:00
While logging into my Google AdWords account this morning I noticed a new campaign summary view, screenshot below. (Click image for full-size)The Google Help Centre explains the new features, which includes grouping online campaigns using a new date picker, with a show all campaigns feature and no click-to-call tab. This looks to have been rolled out to all advertisers, rather than being a limited test, as all of my client managed accounts are now displaying this.-------------------------Search Engine Optimisation - Promote your business online, submit for a free website analysis today!
More About: Campaign , Adwords , View , Summary

UK Search Engine Conferences
2007-04-10 20:00:00
SES New York started today and as most of the main search engine conferences are located in the US I thought I'd share a list of events which are happening (or already taken place) in the UK this year.I'm relatively new to these events but plan on attending some of these conferences during the year as it can be a great experience to learn from the top experts in the search industry and also meet lots of like-minded people in the world of SEO.UK SEO Conferences 2007February:Search Engine Strategies - LondonMarch:SEO Days - LondonSearch Marketing World - Dublin (Not actually in the UK but a lot closer than the States :D)May:Internet World - LondonKiller Search Marketing - LondonSeptember:ad:tech - LondonOctober:Online Marketing Show - LondonPlease let me know if there are any further SEO events this year and I'll add them to the list.-------------------------Search Engine Optimisation - Promote your business online, submit for a free website analysis today!
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PPC Weekly Roundup - 07/04/2007
2007-04-07 07:11:00
Here are the main stories from the world of PPC over the past 7 days:Google AdWordsGoogle confirm two changes to how top ads are displayed and make Website Optimizer available to all.Brad Geddes discusses what determines the 'Account Quality Score', 'AdGroup Quality Score' and 'Keyword Quality Score' for AdWords?John Battelle reports that AOL are to launch white label AOL-only AdWords system on Monday.Jennifer Slegg starts a new blog with some great early posts such as Targeting keyword variations for increased search & pay per click traffic, Using dynamic keyword insertion in AdWords URLs for higher click throughs and How to Brand with Google AdWords & Pay Per Click.Vinny Lingham posts about Google's new metric: Impression Share.Search Engine Guide takes a look Inside Google's New Pay Per Action for Advertisers. SERound table posts about Google entering TV market with TV commercial trial.And the Inside AdSense blog confirms some fresh, new look AdSense ads.Yahoo! Search Mark...
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AdSense "Related Pages" appearing in Google Groups
2007-04-01 01:51:00
While searching Google Group s today I noticed some "Related Pages" links appearing as part of an AdSense ad block, this displayed a section of sponsored links with related pages listed underneath, as pictured below.Image on left is from Google Groups and right-hand-side is from GMailIt looks like Google are currently testing related content as they have recently made changes to their robots.txt file, disallowing access to the /relcontent folder. In addition to Google Groups I've also noticed related pages appearing in GMail, this was actually first spotted in June 2004 but I'm not sure if it's been active since then, I don't use GMail too much! :DI would assume this won't become available as a new AdSense ad format because they're not paid ads and Google will just use this within it's own network of sites. It's unclear at the moment how these links are chosen, some seem to be generated from recent news stories as many of the listings are dated and from within the last few we...
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PPC Weekly Roundup - 31/03/2007
2007-03-31 17:52:00
Here's this weeks collection of PPC news:Google AdWordsPay-per-action beta -- your questions answered - Inside AdWordsAdWords Editor's "Top 10 Favorites" - Inside AdWordsThe Guide to Creating AdWords Pay Per Action Campaigns - eWhisper.netAdSense Publisher View Of Google Pay Per Action - Search Engine LandIs There a Doman Wide Quality Score in Google AdWords? - Search Engine Round tableYahoo! Search MarketingYahoo's Panama ad platform will launch in UK / Europe in Q02 - JenSenseJudge Approves Yahoo Click Fraud Settlement - Search Engine WatchYou Complete Me - Yahoo! Search Marketing BlogMicrosoft adCenterAd Titles and Dynamic Text - adCenter BlogPPCE-Consultancy Offers Paid Search Briefing - Search Engine LandPPC And Your Good Name: Sales From Brand Searches Aren't Incremental - Search Engine LandDoes "Set It & Forget It" Still Work In The PPC Game? - Search Engine Roundtable Things You Shouldn't Care About in PPC - PPC DiscussionsYes, Co-managed PPC And SEO Campaigns Work - Med...
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AdWords Editor 3.0 released
2007-02-27 07:58:02
Google have now released AdWord s Edit or 3.0 available for download.Here are the new and updated features:"New features:Site targeting: AdWords Editor now provides full support for site-targeted campaigns.Negative sites: Add or edit negative sites for keyword- and site-targeted campaigns.Edit while you wait: If you manage multiple accounts with AdWords Editor, edit another account while your changes post.Count your selection: The status bar now displays the number of rows you've selected in the data view.Pause or resume ads, keywords, and sites: Use the Status menu in the edit panel to change the status of selected items.Updated features:Export to HTML: Your HTML export will show or hide deleted campaigns, depending on how you've configured your preferences. The HTML export is ideal for showing your account to someone who doesn't use AdWords Editor.Export to CSV: In addition to account, campaign, and ad group snapshots, you can now export custom views. The CSV export is ideal for ...
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Blogger noindex meta tag problem fixed
2007-02-23 13:53:03
I posted last week about the Blog ger tag including a noindex meta tag, Adam Lasnik of Google has now confirmed on my original post that this should be fixed."Just chatted with the Blogger team, and looks like things should be working normally now. :)"I've just tested this by adding the back into my Blogger template and there's no sign of a noindex/nofollow meta tag this time.-------------------------SEO Services - Promote your business online, submit for a free website analysis today!
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Paid version of Google Apps for your domain released
2007-02-22 19:52:02
The BBC News website today reported that Google have introduced a paid version of Google Apps for your domain. This is aimed at small businesses at a cost of $50 a year per account.Google Apps includes GMail, Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Page Creator and Start Page, with the small business version offering extensibility APIs and 24/7 help and support with a 99.9% uptime guarantee and 10GB storage for GMail, shared calendar resources and the option to turn off advertisements. Here is a full comparison of the standard and premium edtions, with the premium edition currently offering a free trial until April 30th.The BBC article also talks about Google's "brutal timing", coinciding with Microsoft's launch of Office 2007. Google hopes that the chance to collaborate on key documents via the web will prove popular to small firms who are more used to e-mailing copies back and forth.Analysts said the announcement was intended to give people an alternative to Microso...
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Ultimate Social Media Optimization List
2007-02-19 07:48:02
Over the last couple of months I've found myself reading through more and more social media optimisation (SMO) articles. I found Lyndon Antcliff's enormous linkbait list to be a great resource so I thought I'd share a similar list of articles which I found to be useful in improving my own understanding of SMO. Pronet AdvertisingIntroduction to Soci al Media Optimization A Comparison of SEO and SMO Social Media Optimization Vs Social Media MarketingTargeting Social Media OptimizationWill Social Media Optimization become mainstream?55 Sure-Fire Social Media Headline Formulas That WorkSocial Media SensationalismMeasuring the ROI from Social Media MarketingSocial Media Discussions at SESTraditonal PR with a touch of social mediaSEOmozSocial Media Optimization, eh? Let's See What's in Our Bag o' GoodiesRohit Bhargava5 Rules of Social Media OptimizationSearch Engine LandForget ABCs - The Social Media Alphabet Is DNRSMore Letters of the Social Media AlphabetBeyond Google: Social Media ...
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Google AdWords budget analyser now live
2007-02-15 13:44:03
I posted at the end of last month about the Google AdWord s detailed budget analysis which would be coming available to advertisers. While checking my account this morning I noticed that this has now been added with a link to show how will my budget affect my ad performance?The budget for my account was displayed as OK, as shown above, alongside the link which shows how changes to a general accounts budget, keywords, bids and geographical targeting can make a difference to your campaigns performance. This uses an interactive slider tool to display the primary and secondary effects of account changes such as the expected amount of impressions, clicks and change in ad position.Google seem to be very busy with AdWords updates at the moment as they've fixed the Google AdWords Professional verification status pages in addition to revealing that a quality score column will be added to accounts this week and testing a new CPC site targeting model.-------------------------SEO Services - Pro...
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Google AdWords Professional verification pages fixed
2007-02-15 13:44:03
Google have now fixed the AdWord s Qualified Profession al verification problem, so when you now click on an AdWords qualified individual or company logo (while logged in or out) the status page is displayed, rather than forwarding to the AdWords login page which has been happening for the last couple of weeks.Here's a screenshot of my status:-------------------------SEO Services - Promote your business online, submit for a free website analysis today!
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FeedBurner RSS signup conversion tracking on the way
2007-02-15 13:44:03
I wrote a post on the Feed Burner forums yesterday asking how to track RSS subscriptions as conversions.The reply from Dick Costolo confirmed that:This is on our roadmap but not yet possible. We have four or five more things we want to add to site stats to make it "whole" and then we will begin to bridge this blind spot between site visits, subscriptions, and conversions from site visitors to subscribers and the crossover therein.This probably takes us a couple/few more months as this also implies that we need to stop having two separate stats dashboards and create a common content-centric view of stats in which you see your subscription conversions and crossover traffic (eg, "28% of commenters are subscribers"). We are very excited about this, but as always, the good stuff takes time to build :)"This sounds like an excellent feature and one which I would definitely be keen on using to track the type of traffic and keyword phrases which convert into RSS subscriptions.----------------...
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Blogger <$BlogMetaData$> tag includes noindex meta tag!
2007-02-14 19:43:03
I noticed today that blog.seoptimise.com has been removed from the Google index. The blogs web design was updated earlier in the week and by looking into the source code I found that this was being caused by the Blog ger tag which produced the sites meta tags including this line of code:meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" />Luckily I managed to spot this fairly quickly and hard-coded the generated code instead (without the noindex, nofollow meta tag obviously) so hopefully Google will notice this within the next couple of days. The meta tag is used by most Blogger templates and I'm sure it doesn't normally do this but it's definitely worth looking out for. Hardcoding this also has the advantage that you can replace the RSS auto discovery tags with your own FeedBurner URL instead of the default blogger XML files.-------------------------SEO Services - Promote your business online, submit for a free website analysis today!
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How to check Google supplemental results
2007-02-14 19:43:03
Aaron Wall has found a site search command which allows you to view all your Google supplemental index results."If you want to view ONLY your supplemental results you can use this command site:www.yoursite.com *** -view"Last September Google allowed the checking of supplemental index results using a site:www.domain.com ** query but this stopped working a couple of weeks later. Hopefully this one will remain active as it's a very useful and effective way to find which webpages may have become orphaned or contain duplicate content (two common reasons for supplemental results). If your site does have a high ratio of results in the supplemental index here's an excellent guide on how to avoid them.-------------------------SEO Services - Promote your business online, submit for a free website analysis today!
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Is Social Media Marketing ethical?
2007-02-14 01:41:02
Cameron Olthuis has defended the use of social media marketing as an SEO technique following Jason Calacanis' latest statement, including the comments: "This whole gaming of digg/Netscape/MySpace is being called SMO--social media optimization. That's the worst thing I've ever heard of. Anyone who hires an SMO firm is an idiot."I would have to agree with Cameron on this: "There is nothing wrong with promoting content, so long as you aren't cheating the system. Actively promoting content is also important because unlike what those on soapboxes would have you believe, success doesn't always just happen."SMO (Soci al Media Optimisation) involves using social media websites (such as Digg, Del.icio.us and Reddit) as a portal to distribute content to a wide audience. Providing the system isn't being cheated the content must be of a high quality, otherwise it wouldn't get enough votes to be promoted to the social media homepages. In my opinion this is an excellent method of sharing qu...
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Strange Yahoo! SERPs Results
2007-02-10 13:39:04
When searching to see which sites were listed for a Yahoo ! search on SEOptimise I found that none of the results were relevant and they all had something to do with soroptimist instead!Here's a screenshot of the Yahoo! SERPs (click image for full size):The uk.yahoo.com results list the sites I would have expected to see with a suggestion of "Did you mean: soroptimist". This makes far more sense to show the correct results alongside the suggestion rather than just forwarding to what they thought I meant.I've submitted for a Yahoo! directory listing this week so hopefully this will help to return results related to SEOptimise when searching on Yahoo.com.I also found another surprising result listed for the same search and an "SEOptimise blog" query on Yahoo! UK. Instead of listing the correct page title it displayed the blog owner/poster name instead, the correct title is listed however for the label page in 2nd place:-------------------------SEO Services - Promote your business onl...
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What Everybody Ought to Know About Linkbait!
2007-02-07 13:37:02
You can't goto an SEO blog today without reading about Andy Hagans? Ultimate Guide to Link baiting and Social Media Marketing, definitely well worth a read and I've used one tip already with my post title! :)-------------------------SEO Services - Promote your business online, submit for a free website analysis today!
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Google AdWords arrow trick example
2007-02-07 13:37:02
Last month Shoemoney posted a tip to increase CTR by placing the keywords searched for in the shape of an arrow in the AdWord s ad text. Shoemoney has now backed this up with an example using the arrow trick for a ringtones AdWords ad and this shows a 100% CTR increase over the regular ad. For more information and a screenshot of the ads performance please read Shoemoney's Google AdWords arrow trick to increase click through rate post.-------------------------SEO Services - Promote your business online, submit for a free website analysis today!
More About: Rick , Google Adwords

Google Webmaster Central backlink tool
2007-02-07 13:37:02
Google Webmaster Cent ral now provides a backlink tool for site owners. Matt Cutts posted about this yesterday to make sure users understand that "the backlink tool doesn?t show 100% of the backlinks from Google yet" and "do not assume just because you see a backlink that it?s carrying weight.".When logging into my own Google Webmaster Central account, and clicking on the new links tab, I saw that 2,189 were recognised to this blog, while this still has a way to go before showing as many links as Yahoo! Site Explorer (currently 5,146) this is a great improvement over the sampling of results using a Google link: command search (98 links).-------------------------SEO Services - Promote your business online, submit for a free website analysis today!
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Google SERPs display stylesheet error
2007-02-07 13:37:02
While doing a search for my last blog post Google displayed part of it's page source code, mainly the stylesheet, instead of the actual results.Here's the screenshot (click image for full-size) of the page shown instead of the Google SERPs: I also noticed this appear for a search yesterday but haven't seen it appear before this, has anyone else found this error appearing recently?-------------------------SEO Services - Promote your business online, submit for a free website analysis today!
More About: Play , Style , Display , Styles

Blogger mark's edited posts as new
2007-02-07 13:37:02
This is a feature in the new version of Blog ger I find quite annoying, when editing an old post it is marked as new and re-added back into the RSS feed. This has happened today when correcting a spelling mistake in my Aviva Directory post.Does anyone know if it's possible to prevent this from occurring for edited posts?-------------------------SEO Services - Promote your business online, submit for a free website analysis today!
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Which free keyword research tool to use?
2007-02-04 13:35:03
This has been an important week for free keyword research tools, Overture's tool has been unavailable for the last few days (now back online) while Word tracker and Keyword Discovery have both released free versions of their own keyword research tools. So now there seems to be much more choice to find the best keywords, but which tool is best to use?OvertureI've been using the Overture keyword tool for over a year and while the responsiveness has sometimes been very slow I have generally been quite pleased with the results. The search count has been lower than I expected as these figures are only based upon Yahoo! queries from the previous month and occasionally some strange long-tail results appear, such as the "beer college college..." result above but overall this gives a good idea about the popularity of keywords. Another advantage I like is how you can search to find the popular keywords in the UK using the Overture UK tool.WordtrackerMy first impression of using the Wordtracke...
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5 Yahoo! Search Marketing Panama Tips
2007-02-04 13:35:03
Yahoo! are upgrading U.S. accounts to Panama tomorrow and the Yahoo! Search Market ing blog have posted 5 best practices to make sure users are ready for the new ranking model."Here are five practices that you, if you have upgraded to the new platform, should put in place right away in order to get the most out of the new ranking model, and out of your account:1. Include keywords in your ad (use our Insert Keyword feature).2. Carefully determine keywords for your ad group.3. Use ad testing to learn which messages are performing best for you, based on click-through rate normalized for position4. Use our Excluded Keyword feature to help optimize your Advanced match type. 5. Review your current bids and set a campaign budget to meet your business goals."Panama will not be available until later this year in the UK, so far I have only seen screenshots of the new interface but I do manage a couple of American Yahoo! Search Marketing clients so I'm looking forward to seeing the new system ...
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Since last April I've been publishing my Australia travel ph
2007-01-13 19:16:01
Since last April I've been publishing my Australia travel photos to share with friends and family. Rather than uploading the images to Flickr I decided to set myself a long-term Google Images project to try and achieve high rankings for some popular keywords in Google Images.Due to the infrequency of Google Images indexing it has taken a while to achieve good results, but in the last few days, following the PageRank update, I started to notice an increased amount of traffic via Google Images.So far top page results have been achieved for Sydney, Brisbane and Dublin searches. With #1 rankings for the following search terms:Sydney Harbour Bridge Sydney Opera HouseBondi BeachSouth Bank BrisbaneAustralia ZooSydney AquariumHong Kong DisneyGoogle Images can be an excellent method of gaining traffic as there is far less competition for popular keyword phrases, whereas ranking for Google's web search for Sydney keywords would involve a much larger amount of work, including numerous qualit...
More About: Travel , Publishing , Rave

After reading Pronet Advertising's post today about making y
2007-01-13 19:16:01
After reading Pronet Advertising 's post today about making your content delicious I was inspired to add Digg and Del.icio.us buttons to this blog. It took me a while to find all the information I needed to create both buttons so I thought I'd write about the process here.I found that most recommended methods of adding a Digg button doesn't actually work which I found surprising as it's used by blogs such as SEOmoz. This is by using http://www.digg.com/submit?url=INSERT_URL which sends you to the submit page but doesn't include the appended url of the story your submitting. As a workaround I inserted the same URL used by FeedBurner which skips to the second phase of submitting a Digg story and inserts the URL and title. Below is the code used for Blogger, if you use different blog software you would obviously need to change the way the URL and title is written.<a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=<$Bl ogItemPermalinkUrl$>&title=<$BlogIt emTitle$>" target="_blank">...
More About: Reading , Post , Today , Read

Microsoft adCenter are running an online seminar for an hour
2007-01-13 07:15:04
Microsoft adCent er are running an online seminar for an hour next Wednesday at 8:30am (US Pacific Time).Here are the webcast event details:"If you feel that your marketing efforts are vanishing into cyberspace, join this webcast to see how Microsoft adCenter can help you develop ads to target the audience you want. This session provides real-world examples of successful advertising campaigns that have benefited from the powerful demographic-targeting capabilities within adCenter. We share case studies, demonstrations, and tips on how you can apply similar techniques to your own advertising campaigns using Microsoft adCenter demographics and Microsoft adCenter Labs research tools. View this webcast to discover how to reach your potential customers and increase your return on investment."
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Frank Watson of Search Engine Watch found while querying a G
2007-01-13 07:15:04
Frank Watson of Search Engine Watch found while querying a Google AdWords problem that quality scoring impacts the delivery of your ads even if the ad variations are set to be displayed evenly."A rep at Google explained it this way:Regarding the serving, this actually is a common question that we receive. The system tries to equally rotate ads but there are other factors that weigh into this rotation. In your case it does look fairly even for the most part, however the system may be looking at the one ad as one with a less quality score than the other, thus not serving it as often. Although you have it opted into rotate more evenly it isn't guaranteed that the system will functionally work to an exact science. I know this isn't the answer you were hoping for, but this is what we have been told by engineering!"
More About: Search Engine Watch , Rank , Search Engine

Yahoo Search Marketing minimum bid reduced to 5p
2007-01-11 19:14:01
Yahoo! Search Market ing have confirmed that minimum bids will be reduced to 5p in the UK from January 19th.Here is a copy of the email I received today:"Dear Advertiser,In order to reflect the dynamics of the market, and to help you maximise your return on investment, Yahoo! Search Marketing will introduce a new minimum variable bid pricing structure. This means that from January 19th, our bidding prices will start from as little as £0.05*, which is great news for your business!Please note that minimum bids will vary by search term, with the lowest bid price starting at £0.05*. Yahoo! Search Marketing is dedicated to providing world-class online marketing products and services that drive highly targeted customers to your business while allowing you the greatest return on investment.We hope this new pricing will help you make the most of your Yahoo! Search Marketing account and allow you to drive even more highly targeted customers to your site.If you have any queries about this new ...
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