Google has added a new feature to Google Analytics that is pretty cool. When you log in now, it will show you a summary of performance data, including the percentage increase or decrease in traffic for the last month, for each site you are tracking. This gives you a quick and dirty thumbnail of how your sites are performing without manually digging into each one. Yahoo! is releasing its own free analytics product, so Google will probably be ratcheting up the features in Google Analytics to keep up. This is a very good thing for the consumer.

Here are a couple more good sites that deal with marketing law firm web sites:

http://marketingforlawfirms.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/lawyer-website-marketing-powerful-search-engine-advice-straight-from-the-source/

http://knol.google.com/k/jerry-work/-/vq7k1h2e94bz/6

If you're in Nashville, come and see us tonight (Thursday) at the Chamber of Commerce After Hours networking event at the convention center downtown.

Labels: analytics, google, Google Analytics, internet marketing, Yahoo

We have been hard at work for weeks now on a couple of projects that are taking way longer than expected to complete...but that's just life, I guess. We are currently finishing up our newest book, tentatively titled something like "Winning the Pay per Click Game: Scientific Strategies for Maximizing Your Paid Search Return on Investment". How's that for a snazzy title? Unlike our previous books, this one will be published, either on our own with the help of a publish-on-demand company, or through an established publisher, depending on circumstances.

We are still working on our Google AdWords management application. That has definitely turned into a complex, difficult project. We are working with off-shore developers, but the development process is taking quite a bit longer than anticipated. We may end up taking over development and finishing it ourselves. But hopefully it won't come to that.

In the world of Internet marketing, the big news this week is Microsoft pulling its offer to purchase Yahoo!. Yahoo! stock has tumbled significantly on the news. Yahoo!'s largest shareholder, Capital Research Global Investors, says he thinks Yahoo!'s board of directors should be embarrassed. We at Work Media are disappointed at the failure of the merger. A combined Yahoo!/Google search network would give Google some real competition, which would be good for advertisers. As it stands, Google's marketshare just continues to grow, strengthening its dominance. No good ever comes from one company owning a market.

We are scheduled to speak at an upcoming search engine marketing conference in Nashville in August. That should be fun. Hopefully we'll have published copies of our book to give away by then.

If you need some help with your company's search engine optimization or pay per click management, please contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, internet marketing, Microsoft, Yahoo

Think before you spend. That is today's lesson. We're talking about spending with regard to what you spend on advertising, especially online advertising. We have a large client who inquired about advertising on the front page of Yahoo!. Before we even looked into what it would cost, we knew this was a bad idea.

Yahoo! has massive reach. The home page gets nearly 2 billion impressions PER DAY. That is a lot of eyeballs. It's fairly analogous to advertising during the Super Bowl, both in terms of reach and expense. So yes, advertising on the front page of Yahoo! would give you an incredible amount of exposure and probably drive a lot of traffic to your web site.

But even if you are a big enough company to afford Yahoo!, is it the best use of your money? Probably not. For a fraction of the cost, you could run ads on dozens or hundreds of web sites much more closely aligned with your target market. For instance, if you are a financial services company, you could run your ad on many financial-related web sites, where people are already interested in your type of service, for pennies on the dollar of what the Yahoo! ad would cost.

You should apply this kind of thinking to all of your marketing. Ask yourself: am I spending my money on an advertising forum that will expose my message to the maximum number of people who are good prospects for my service at the best price? If you have lots of money to spend on marketing, we still think you should apply this kind of thinking. Spend your money on targeted advertising first, and then if there are funds left over, you can use those funds on a more broad, branding-oriented campaign.

If you could use some guidance with your pay per click management or search engine optimization, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: advertising, business advice, internet marketing, marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay per click management, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, Yahoo

I read over the weekend that Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo!. They are willing to pay a nice premium over where the stock is at right now (having been beaten down by disappointing earnings), so it would represent a nice profit for Yahoo! stockholders. Will the deal go through? Who knows.

As search marketers, we would like to see the deal go through. We have tried to use Microsoft's search network and marketing platform (and continue to try) but Microsoft just doesn't have enough traffic yet, and its ad serving platform sometimes just doesn't seem to work very well. There are some features of Microsoft's ad center control panel that we really like, and some that we don't like.

The same with Yahoo! There are some features of its control panel we like, and some we don't. If the merger does happen, we would hope Microsoft would combine the best features of the two platforms into something really useful. The keyword inventory of the combined companies would also come closer to rivaling Google, and would exceed Google worldwide.

Frankly, we would just rather have to only deal with two major search marketing platforms than three. We like a lot of the things Microsoft has tried to do. Combining Microsoft's technology with Yahoo!'s Web positioning would create something new that could really be a boon to search engine advertisers. It would also set up an even more competitive situation between Google and the combined company, which should result in an increased pace in innovation and a better situation for advertisers. It seems counter-intuitive to think that a decrease in competitors from three to two would result in more competition, but it would. Microsoft just does not have the search engine traffic to be a real threat to Google or Yahoo!. But the new merged Microsoft/Yahoo! would be able to give Google a real run for its money. And that would be good for all of us.

If you could use some help with your pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, Microsoft, Microsoft adCenter, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, sponsored search, web marketing, Yahoo, Yahoo Search Marketing

Just a few nuggets of information for your reading pleasure:

In a continuing push to give advertisers more options and control, Google has released a new feature for the AdWords interface that allows advertisers to create a campaign template that can be used to quickly set up new campaigns. We have not had a chance to try it out yet, but we'll let you know what we think of it when we do.

Quick tip: when setting up ads in Google with dynamic titles, if you use the form "{KeyWord:your keyword}" where the "K" and "W" in "Keyword:" are capitalized, then the words in your title will be capitalized. Now, this is not necessarily a good thing. For instance, if you are bidding on keywords for which lots of advertisers are using dynamic or similar titles, then you might be better off using all lower case in your title in order to look different. You never know until you try.

Privacy groups are filing complaints with the Federal Trade Commission regarding the new advertising platform being launched by Facebook. You may want to hold off on investing your marketing dollars in Facebook at this point.

The Yahoo! Store ecommerce platform shut down for many of the sites using it on Monday because of the extremely heavy volume. If you run an ecommerce site, that might make a strong case for using your own platform on your own server.

Last, but not least, the SEC football championship game is this weekend! Being based out of Nashville and being UT fans, we are excited at the opportunity for our Vols to bring home a conference championship. The season the Vols have had this year can serve as an important business less for all of us: never give up; never stop fighting to accomplish your dream. After three blowout losses to Cal, Florida, and Alabama, it looked like the Vols were down for the count. But they kept fighting. Five games later, they are 9-3 and headed to Atlanta to face the LSU Tigers. Go Vols!

Labels: Facebook, Google Adwords, internet marketing, Yahoo

Okay, after months of researching, writing, scrapping what we just wrote, re-writing, and re-writing some more, we have finally launched our latest book:

Yahoo! Search Marketing User's Handbook & Strategy Guide

We believe this is the first book on the market devoted purely to using Yahoo's new search marketing platform to manage Yahoo! paid search campaigns. It is an 85 page, 6" X 9" format pdf download. It is available at the following web site:

http://yahoosearchmarketingbook.com

for $49.95.

Here is some of what the book teaches:

How to create an account.
How to create campaigns.
How to create ad groups.
How to do keyword research so you TARGET THE RIGHT KEYWORDS.
How to administer and fund your account.
How to run reports.
How to set up analytics so YOU KNOW EXACTLY HOW YOUR CAMPAIGNS ARE DOING.
How to use Yahoo!'s dynamic text features to CREATE MORE POWERFUL ADS and SAVE TIME.
Strategies for setting your bids.
Understanding the math behind running successful ad campaigns.
How to write POWERFUL ADS that get results.
The importance of keyword/ad/landing page congruency.
How to create LANDING PAGES THAT GENERATE SALES.
How to beat Yahoo!'s Quality Index ranking.

Any purchaser of the book who is not satisfied gets his or her money back, no questions asked.

If you have any questions about the book, or our Yahoo! Search Marketing management services, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search marketing, sem, sponsored search, Yahoo, Yahoo Search Marketing

This blog has become a place where we can discuss things related to projects we are working on, sort-of spilling our experiences onto paper (or screen, more correctly). It's a chance to learn and educate at the same time. We have written a couple of Internet marketing guides, which are available on the Work Media book store page, but we are nearing the launch of our first real book effort - the Yahoo! Search Marketing Manual 2007 (tentative title). We will be attempting to push the book out using an aggressive Internet marketing plan incorporating natural search, paid search, content, and an affiliate program.

The affiliate program thing is new to us. This is our first foray into the world of affiliate marketing, so we thought it might make for another interesting topic for a series of blog posts. So for the next few weeks, while we figure this thing out, we will be making occasional posts describing what we are learning about it. And so we will continue learning while educating at the same time.

A good place to start is answering the question: just what is an affiliate program?

Wikipedia.org defines an "affiliate program" as:

a method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts. Compensation or commission may be made based on a certain value for each Impession (CPM), click (Pay per click), registrant or new customer (Pay per lead) or (Cost Per Acquisition / CPA), sale (usually a percentage, Pay per sale or revenue share), or any combination of them.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing

There are lots of different kinds of affiliate programs, as the above definition shows. The kind that we are going to be looking at initially is paying a percentage of the net income earned on the sale of a downloadable product. This is what we will be doing with our new book.

We will likely be using the services of a company called Click Bank (http://www.clickbank.com). Click Bank describes itself as "the Internet's premier retailer for digitally delivered products." Basically, they make it possible for sellers of downloadable products to sell their products through the Click Bank network, using affiliates who are signed up with Click Bank. By becoming a Click Bank customer, we will expose our book to thousands of affiliates to sell on their own web sites. If greatly multiplies our selling ability.

I wish we had time to go into much greater detail about affiliate programs, but there is much work to be done, so we need to get to it. There is much more to tell, so come back often and we will tell you everything we learn.

For help setting up an affiliate program for your own web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: affiliate, affiliate program, internet marketing, Yahoo, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

Keywords are the lifeblood of your pay-per-click marketing campaigns. If you don't have a strong list of keywords, then you are going to lose quality traffic. Don't just rely on the keyword tools within the search engines for your keyword research. Here are some ways to generate keywords to try in your campaigns:

Comb your web site for keywords. Every different way you have described your business on your site is a new keyword or set of keywords.

Think from your customer's perspective. Are the words you use to describe your business really the way other people would describe it? Ask around. Whatever words people are using to search for your kind of business are the words you need to target, regardless of what terms are used in your industry.

Nichebot.com. We really like this web site. First sign up for an account. It's free to sign up. Then type a starting keyword related to your service or product in the text box at the top of the page and hit the Search button. You can change the middle dropdown list to "Overture" to get a better idea of the actual keywords people are using to search in Yahoo. But don't overlook the "Word Tracker" option, which will generate a lot of keyword data. The data will be returned with information such as the number of searches performed for each keyword, the amount of competition, and the KEI for each keyword ("KEI" is a value for the keyword based on a formula that considers the number of searches for the keyword relative to the number of directly competing web pages).

You can also look through your web logs for the search terms people have used on your web site or to find your web site.

If you sell products, you can combine brands with attributes of the products (color, width, size, etc.) to create many specific, late buying cycle keywords.

Try to think of keywords that reflect different stages of the searcher's buying cycle. Early in the buying cycle, they will be looking for more general information about your type of service or products. Later in the buying cycle, when they are much closer to making a decision and doing business, they will use more specific keywords, which might include particular brands and models, or even locations to make a purchase. Try to use keywords that cover the entire buying cycle.

And remember that you are looking for groups of keywords. Unless your campaign is very small, it is unlikely you will want to run a 1:1 ratio of keywords to ads. It will be a very unrulely number of ads to have to create and monitor. So you will be assigning ads to small groups of related keywords, and writing ad copy that applies to all of the keywords. So if you're going to run ads for "gardening", you might as well run them for "flower gardening", "spring garden", and "planting". Yahoo and MSN have some nice dynamic features that make it pretty easy to customize an ad for multiple keywords.

If you would like some help generating keywords and managing your pay-per-click campaigns, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, keywords, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, Yahoo, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

Labels: internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, Yahoo, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

Yahoo has gotten overly strict in its attempt to only allow relevant sponsored search ads. We are finding that a lot of terms that are not directly related to the specific product or service are being automatically denied. We think this is short-sighted, because it eliminates the possibility of displaying your ads to those who would be strong candidates, but performing searches on other related topics. For example, if you sell diamond engagement rings, you may not be able to run ads for searches related to weddings.

We also have to admit that we're fairly perplexed by Yahoo Search Marketing's new Quality Index score that is applied to sponsored search ads. But here is a strategy to help deal with that particular issue:

Bid high at the start of the Yahoo campaign to generate as high a click-through ratio as possible. It seems that generating a high click-through ratio has a positive influence on the Quality score. Once you have established a Quality score, you can back off of your bids if you need to in order to maximize your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

Another strategy is to pursue a tight coupling between keywords and ads. Yahoo allows you to dynamically insert keywords, but it may still be helpful to write lots of specific ads that are highly related to their keywords.

We like the new Yahoo interface, but we're definitely not crazy about their new rules. But as we develop effective techniques for dealing with Yahoo (and the other search engines), we will be sure to share them with you here.

For help managing your Yahoo pay-per-click campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, sponsored search, Yahoo, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

We have been spending a fair amount of time lately exploring the new Yahoo Search Marketing interface, and we've come upon one new feature that we are very excited about. It's the Alternate Text option for your keywords. This option lets you place a specific word or phrase in a particular location in the ad associated with the keyword. For this to work, the copy for the ad must contain the placeholder {KEYWORD:default_text} in the ad body or title. If alternate text is specified, then the ad will contain the alternate text. However, if the alternate text causes the ad to exceed the maximum character limitation, then the default text will be used.

Here is an example:

Let's say you sell shoes on your website. Let's also say you sell a line of shoes called "Hudsons", so you have an ad group set up for keywords related to Hudsons. Let's say the Hudsons come in three colors: red, yellow, and blue. You might have the following keywords in the ad group:

Hudsons
red Hudsons
yellow Hudsons
blue Hudsons

Your ad could be written like so: Find the {KEYWORD:default_text} you are looking for here!

The default text would be "Hudson", so the "Hudsons" keyword would use the default text.

The "red Hudsons" keyword could be set with the Alternate Text property "red Hudsons", so when the ad was displayed for that keyword, it would read: Find the red Hudsons you are looking for here!

The same would be done for the yellow and blue Hudsons keywords so that depending on which keyword had triggered the ad, it would be customized to match the exact search phrase.

This is an extremely powerful feature because it splits the different between using a single ad for every single keyword and using an ad for lots of keywords. The more personalized the ad copy seems, and the more tightly coupled with the user's search phrase, the more likely it will generate a click.

For help managing your Yahoo Search Marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, sponsored search, Yahoo, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

An "API" is an Application Programming Interface that allows you to hook into another computer system to exchange information with it. For example, Google and Yahoo both have search API's that allow you to extract search data from their systems for display in your own applications or web pages, formatted however you want. This data is generally in XML format and exchanged via a protocol called SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). If you're not going to be doing any programming, you really don't need to worry about this stuff. But the reason I bring it up is just to give a little bit of technical background for the remainder of our discussion, which is about using pay-per-click applications that use the search engine API's to get data.

In our opinion, it only makes sense for the search engines to provide open access to their API's and to provide plenty of information for advertisers to run effective ad campaigns. But the trend seems to be going in reverse.

Last year, Google announced that it would begin charging a fee of $.25 per 1,000 operations. This doesn't instinctively feel like a lot, but it is. Performing a single action in a pay-per-click management program generally involves several operations. And these programs, by their very nature, are intended to be used to make several or even dozens of bid changes for ads every day, for every keyword or keyword group associated with each ad. So this adds up to potentially many, many thousands of actions every day, adding substantial costs on top of the expense of paying for the ads in the first place.

A backlash has already started, as some companies are moving toward using cheap labor to manage their ads, rather than this expensive technology. Given that the easier it is for advertisers to manage their campaigns, the more money Google will make, we don't see how this benefits anyone.

Yahoo, with the release of its new ad management system, has also made a change to its API. Though Yahoo is not charging like Google, it has placed a much greater bandwidth restriction on the data returned from its API. What this means is that bid management programs will have to make fewer changes to bids to stay within limits. Again...why would Yahoo make it more difficult for advertisers to use manage their accounts? We know that constantly pinging search engine servers to make changes to sponsored search bids are a drain on their servers, but these companies make billions of dollars a year, and their profit should easily pay for enough servers to handle it.

As for MSN, except for invited parties, they have not yet released their API for general consumption (we wish they would get on with it), but we have a feeling that Microsoft will be much more open with its API, at least initially, since it is still playing catchup in the search arena.

The net effect of these changes to API's is that it just won't be as cost effective to use bid management software as it once was. With Google, you will be paying an expensive tax on top of your bids, and with Yahoo, you will have much less control. At Work Media, we are still experimenting with different ways to manage campaigns. We actually still do most of our campaign management manually and will probably continue to do so. Especially now that the search engines are making it so difficult to use their API's.

If you need help managing your sponsored search marketing campaigns, please call us at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, sponsored search, Yahoo, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

According to Online Media Daily, Yahoo! and Create With Context surveyed 2,261 customers who had recently engaged in an online transation such as consumer electronics, automobiles, hotels or loans. Their conclusion was that 40% of those surveyed could be classified as "brand advocates" - meaning they discussed and endorsed their preferred brands with others. For instance, they might discuss their favorite brands on message boards or on a mySpace page.

40%.

This definitely underscores the importance in building a strong "brand" for your company. Working like hell to sell your product or service is a bit of a waste if you don't have a "brand" by which your market can identify you.

So think long and hard about the colors on your web site, your logo, the "look" of your web site. And think long and hard about the story of your business. And what it is that differentiates you from others. If there isn't anything, create something. Because it is likely that 40% of the people you sale to online will go on to endorse your brand and spread your brand to others. If they feel you're worth it.

And if you have a brand.

Contact Work Media at info@workmedia.net or 888-299-4837 for help building your Company's brand and infusing it into your Internet marketing campaign.

Labels: brand, branding, internet marketing, marketing, online branding, social media, surveys, Yahoo

Here is some advice on writing successful pay-per-click ads.

You're probably going to have to write a lot of ads. Even if you only have 100 keywords in your campaign, those ads need to be targeted to the keywords. You can somewhat reduce the workload by using lots of tightly bound categories and writing your ads at the category level. By tightly bound, we mean that the category refers to only a few very similar or complimentary keywords. For instance, you might have a category with the keywords "candle wax", "candle wax for sale", "buy candle wax", and "hobby candle wax", in which case you could get away with just writing one ad for all of the keywords.

A strategy that is often recommended is for your ad titles to match exactly the search phrase. For example. if the ad is for the search phrase "Nevada hunting trip", the title of the ad would be "Nevada hunting trip". This might be a good way to write headlines quickly, but in general we are not in favor of this approach. The title is the most important part of your ad. You only have 40 characters. You should use the keywords, but put some effort into writing a title that will compel the reader to click. In the above example, how about something like "Find freedom hunting in Nevada" or "Nevada hunting trips for your family".

This is a good time to point out that you really have no way of knowing what headline or description will be the most effective without testing. But when changing your ad, only change a single element at a time. For instance, only change the title, or only make a change to the copy, or maybe only change a single word.

As far as the ad copy goes, here are some writing tips:

• Write in a casual, conversational style. Don't over estimate the intelligence of the reader of the ad.
• Use a call to action: "Find it here", "Click here", "Click now", "Save now", etc.
• Mention a strong guarantee, a special offer, a discount, etc.
• The most powerful word you can use is "you".
  

Think from your prospective customers' perspective. If it were you, what would make you click the link? Your ad is nothing more than salesmanship in print - just like any form of direct marketing. You are using words to pursuade the reader to click the link and come to your web site for more information. Keep that in mind and craft your ads carefully.

For help managing your search engine marketing campaigns, contact Work Media at workmedia.net or 888-299-4837.

Labels: ad writing, copywriting, internet marketing, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, Yahoo, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

I just got an email from Yahoo! explaining a change in the Manage Bids page of the Yahoo! Search Marketing control panel. According to this email, the "Top 5 Max Bids", "Position", and "Your Cost" columns are being replaced with "Estimated Average Position" and "Bid Range for Top Positions".

You are no longer going to see the bids of others. Internet marketers in Yahoo! will now rely on less information.

Apparently, the new Sponsored Search interface does not provide exact bids. Yahoo! is releasing the new interface to its customers in stages. To make it fair for everyone, they are removing the bid information from customers still using the old system.

I would be willing to bet that the companies getting the new interface the earliest are the biggest spenders on sponsored search ads.

So the big spenders get the benefits of the new system such as split testing, while the smaller spenders are stuck in the old system and having information removed.

Does that seem fair?

It's going to be even more important for advertisers to try to track ROI on a keyword basis. Contact Work Media for help managing your Yahoo! Search Marketing campaign.

Labels: blog marketing, internet marketing, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, sponsored search, web marketing, Yahoo, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing