How to select Standard vs Advanced Match in Yahoo Search (Panama)

One of the biggest changes to the new Yahoo Search Marketing platform, or Panama is the fact that ad rankings now depend on Bid amount and Ad Quality (Sound like Google?). But how does setting your keyword match type (Standard vs. Advanced) factor into the equation, is it better to use Standard Match or Advanced Match?

In the old system Standard Match got top billing no matter how high the Advanced Match keywords were being bid. Now it doesn't matter how you set up your keywords, Match type is irrelevant, only Bid Amount and Ad Quality are relevant.

Does this mean you should log in and switch all of your ads over to Standard from Advanced or vice versa? It depends.

The same rules apply for Standard match it shows exact matches, their singular and plural variations and common misspellings, Advanced match displays your ad on broader range of searches.

So what does this mean for your keywords, first off, it is a much more competitive environment as there are more ads being mixed together and with increased competition there are often higher click charges, but at the same time you should receive more traffic.

What kind of results are others experiencing? I for one have seen a little more competition and slightly higher cost per clicks, but the ads we are running are all of good quality so are positions are higher as well. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues or if impression levels and cost per clicks start to level off.

New Search Engine Marketing Conference

Mark your calendars folks for SMX Advanced, in Seattle from June 4-5, 2007. Search Engine Land editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan and other search marketing experts will be sharing their expertise on search engine optimization and paid search advertising techniques.

Danny Sullivan is widely considered by many to be one of the grandfather's of search engine marketing, and has been quoted in places like The Wall St. Journal, USA Today and ABC's Nightline on news related to search engine marketing. Formerly the editor-in-chief of Search Engine Watch, he now heads up Search Engine Land as their editor-in-chief.

Now Danny Sullivan also has a long history with Search Engine Strategies Conference and is currently the chair for the New York SES Event. It will be interesting to see as time goes, how this new SMX Advanced event will compare to Search Engine Strategies. With Danny Sullivan at the helm, this is definitely an event that advanced search engine marketers don't want to miss.

A simple fix to improve your website performance

A simple feature that many businesses overlook on their sites is a search box. About 20% of users prefer to "search" rather than browse the site through navigation.

Google Free is an easy, free way to add search to any website. It allows users to search the contents of your website through a search box. It's easy to install with one line of code and it allows websites to customize the colors and add a logo to the search results. The only catch is, if you use Google Free, you have to include a Google Web Search box on your site as well.

If you want the simplicity of adding search to your site, but don't want to include the Google Web Search box, you can use Google Mini or Google Search Appliance.

According to Google, the Google Mini is designed for the needs of small and medium-sized businesses. The Mini provides a cost-effective search solution for web-enabled content with up to 300,000 documents (or unique URLs) in a single collection. Pricing for a year starts at $1,995 for 10,000 documents.

For larger businesses, Google offers the Google Search Appliance. According to Google, it is designed for larger businesses and can support up to 15 million documents. The Search Appliance also includes a variety of features such as direct database indexing, a feeds API allowing you to push new content into the index, OneBox for Enterprise, Query Stemming, RAID (to provide continued service in the event of hard disk failure) and support for user-level document security including a security API. These features are unique to the Google Search Appliance. It starts at $30,000 to search up to 500,000 documents.

Compare the mini to search appliance here: http://www.google.com/enterprise/feature_comparison.html .

One added benefit to using Google for site search is that every page indexed in your site is also indexed in Google web search, this is great way to improve your sites performance in keyword searches!

Changes to Adwords (For the Better)

As many of you probably have noticed in your Adwords campaigns, new tools have been added. The most obvious and probably the most valuable to everyone is the ability to pause individual keywords, ad creatives and sites (for site targeted campaigns). This is very valuable tool as previously if you wanted to pause an individual keyword you either had to pause the entire ad group or move the keyword into its own ad group and then pause the ad group. Adwords says that this tool is the result of the feedback of advertisers.

Another valuable change to Adwords, is a change to their Quality Score along with the ability to see an approximation of your Quality Score. To see your Quality Score, simply log into your account, and go into an ad group, click on the customize columns and display Quality Score. Its a pretty basic rating, either Great, OK, or Poor. Just like in the past, Ads with Higher Click through Rates (Great Rating) get the benefit of lower CPCs than those ads that are OK or Poor in Quality Score.

If any of you want to be kept more up to date on changes in Adwords, I recommend you checking out their blog, Inside Adwords or come back here for updates. Additionally, if you want to see more changes in Adwords, you can always email them suggestions,

Contests Help Make Internet Marketing Campaigns Winners

Ten Golden Rules and Annie's Costumes were featured in a Syndicated Article by columnist Jeff Zbar







Contests can be key element in making campaign a winner.

Ten Golden Rules developed a contest to build a database during the Las Vegas Affiliate Summit 2007 trade show. In exchange for a business card, participants received a chance at a custom Web site makeover and search engine optimization (SEO) package valued at $10,000. The contest was valuable for building a prospect and newsletter list. "We stay top-of-mind with these prospects through our Ten Golden Rules eNewsletter." explained CEO Jay Berkowitz.

AnniesCostumes.com created a survey and contest on their website last Halloween. The survey asked about the hottest costumes by category, including boys, girls, couples and pets. The prize was a PlayStation. The contest was successful, the company's opt-in e-mail marketing database spiked to 150,000 names, and the company wrote and distributed a press release featuring the "Top Ten Costumes of 2006," which was covered in dozens of newspapers, radio stations and other media.

SEOQuake: Firefox Browser Extension for SEO

SEOQuake is an extention for the Mozilla Firefox browser (v1.5 or higher), and is designed to give SEOs like myself a look-see of a site's parameters in Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live. No folks, it isn't another browser toolbar...in fact by adding this free internet marketing tool which lets me see search engine parameters on the fly, I've managed to remove my Alexa toolbar, Google toolbar, and a few other ones that were taking up space on my browser.

Here are some of the parameters SEOQuake is capable of tracking:

• Google PR - Google PageRank of current page
• Google Index - Number of indexed pages in Google.
• Google link - Number of links in Google. (excluding the ones coming from your site)
• Google cachedate - Date of current Google cashe.
• Yahoo Index - Number of indexed pages in Yahoo.
• Yahoo link - Number of links in Yahoo. (excluding the ones coming from your site)
• Yahoo Linkdomain (LD) - Number of links in Yahoo, pointed to the current domain. Linkdomain (LD) operator finds pages linking to domain, as opposed to link which finds references to a single page.
• MSN Index - Number of indexed pages in Live/MSN.
• MSN link - Number of links in MSN, pointed to the current page. (excluding the ones coming from your site)
• MSN Linkdomain (LD) - Number of links in Live/MSN, pointed to the current domain. Linkdomain (LD) operator finds pages linking to domain, as opposed to link which finds references to a single page.
• Alexa Rank - Traffic estimation index
• WebArchive age - First date in Archive.org
• Del.icio.us index - Link to del.icio.us history for current url.
• Technorati index - Link to Technorati history for current url.
• Digg index - Link to Digg history for current url.
• Whois link - Link to the Whois record of current domain.

Whether you're looking to find out how many pages are indexed in Google, what your Google PageRank is, or what your Alex rank is, this free internet marketing tool does it all. And another feature that I just have to mention is the Line-through "nofollow links" option. By turning on this feature, you will see lines through any links that have the nofollow set in the HTML. This is great for link builders who want to make sure they're not buying invalid links without having to shift through a ton of HTML code. And did I mention that this internet marketing tool is free?

Warning: overuse of this free internet marketing tool can get you temporarily banned from the search engines. If this happens, you will need to delete your cookies and change your proxy server.

This guy is really smart!

I believe in the rule of threes.

It works for recipes, jokes and business. the first time you tell a joke (or make a recipe) credit the source by name "this is my Aunt Ruth's Thanksgiving sweet potato and marshmallow recipe', the second time credit the source 'my friend told me this joke' the third time give credit 'I heard this joke' the fourth time it's your joke or your recipe.

In business, I find it extremely valuable to define your top three BIG projects. Apply regular attention to these projects over and above the daily tasks and you will find great career and business success.

The first time I heard of Rohit Bhargava's blog my search manager referred me to his post on the top 7 trends in internet marketing, I was really impressed with his clear writing style and sharp insight into internet marketing. The second time I found one of Rohit's posts in a web search, this time I added his RSS feed to my MyGoogle home page. The third time I arrived at his blog was from a link to his blog post on the 5 rules of Social Media Optimization. This time I subscribed to his blog through Feedburner - I don't want to miss any posts!

To liberally extend my rule of threes, if someone's blog pops up in your world three times inside two months and it is well written, intelligent and on the leading edge of what matters - I declare this person, Rohit Bhargava, is really smart. I highly recommend a visit to the Influential Interactive Marketing Blog !

I hope we cross paths at a conference or event one day soon Rohit.

Jay Berkowitz

Congratulations to our friends at Date.com Celebrating their 10th Anniversary on Valentine's Day!

Exactly ten years ago today, Date.com launched offering visitors a free online dating trial, since then, thousands of singles have found love.

“When we launched the website, most of the online users were apprehensive about using the internet to find a date.” said Date.com’s CEO, Meir Strahlberg “We are proud to have helped make the internet a safe and convenient way for people to start a relationship.”

In all, over 10,000,000 members have made Date.com one of the most popular dating sites on the internet.

Congratulations to Meir and the team at Date.com!

Search Engine Marketing Managers Spent $9.4 Billion in 2006

According to SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, US search engine marketing managers and their companies spent 9.4 billion dollars in 2006. When you compare "State of Search Engine Marketing 2006" report with 2005 results, it show that search engine marketing spending has increased by 63 percent. These numbers far exceed the earlier projections that estimated 7.2 billion dollars would be spend on search engine marketing in 2006.

Where are search engine marketing managers spending their money?

The big winner of last year's marketing budgets was pay-per-click advertising. Search engine marketing managers spent 86 percent or 8 billion dollars on PPC. Next in line was natural search engine optimization at 1.1 billion dollars. Other search engine marketing expenditures that were noted in the report were development of SEM technologies at 122 million dollars and paid inclusion at 94 million dollars.

So what are the search engine marketing spending projections for the next five years?

Search engine marketing is projected to continue to grow over the next five years to 18.6 billion dollars in the United States.

Kevin Newcomb offers some additional key metrics to the SEMPO report in his article, "Search Marketers Spent $9.4 Billion in 2006" on ClickZ News. SEMPO isn't the only organization projecting spending in search engine marketing. In "SEMPO: Search Marketing Spending Passes $9B", Wendy Davis mentions some statistics from an Interactive Advertising Bureau's report, noting that search engine marketing only accounted for 40% of online ad revenue (around $3.2 billion) for the first six months of last year, which implies SEMPO's report might be a little optimistic on search engine marketing spending. However, regardless of how much exactly was spent in 2006, both reports show that search engine marketing is a growing force in today's marketing and advertising.

Super Bowl Ads Online at YouTube

With some advertisers spending more than $2.6 million for a 30-second commercial during Super Bowl XLI, companies are turning their advertising efforts online. Companies like Snickers, GoDaddy.com, and Nationwide Insurance, who have all bought spots during the Super Bowl, have also posted their ads online early to get positive feedback and build up hype for their ads that will broadcast on Sunday.

What about those companies who can't afford a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl? Well one group of six self-proclaimed "Web 2.0" companies has formed to create ads that ride the wave of Super Bowl advertising without actually advertising in the Super Bowl.

Priced out of the big game, internet startups meebo, Meez, Multiply, Plaxo, RockYou.com and Technorati opted this year for a more frugal and fun approach. Having watched our dot-com bubble predecessors spend millions on ads that ran once, we charged up our handheld video cameras and started shooting. As you'll see, the results are zany and full of laughs. You can view their ads on YouTube.

"Instead of spending a lot of money to put ads on the Super Bowl, we'd throw them up on YouTube and try to get as much viral going as we could," said Michael Lehman, director of marketing for Meez.com. "By letting our audiences know this is up there and sending them to YouTube to see not only ours but also the other videos from the other companies, it's a great way to cross-pollinate our audience."

The idea behind the videos is that the Internet provides a level playing field for ads that will then run side by side against Super Bowl ad repeats. YouTube will be hosting the aired Super Bowl ads after the game is over on Sunday. Log on and vote!

Link Building Best Practices

The lust for links has been a self-defeating philosophy that each year has cost many online business operators thousands of dollars (per business) in lost sales. - Michael Martinez, "Overcoming the Heiro Effect in SEO"

I have to agree with Michael on this on this one. Link building shouldn't be about collecting as many links as you can...it should be about developing relationships with other niche specific and authority sites. This collecting of any and every cheap link you can find is not SEO, it's link baiting.

Link baiting...just another form of Web site marketing. If you're relying on link baiting to improve your search engine rankings, you're pursuing an inefficient methodology.

Yes, link popularity is one factor in search engine optimization, but it's not the end all, be all of SEO. Now, when you are looking to acquire links from other sites, here's where you should be looking:

• Authority Directories - DMOZ, Yahoo Directory, GoGuides.org, are just some of the authority sites out there that make valuable link partners. Some directories may charge a fee to be listed but these links that you pay for are worth it. Note: be careful...some directories may claim to be authority sites when they're really just link farms, so do your research before paying for a link.
• Vendor Sites - get links from the people you do business with every day. Whether they're suppliers who are providing the products you sell, or your ecommerce partners who are selling the products you manufacture, these sites are relevant link partners.
• Online Press Releases - Publish relevant news about your niche industry, and other sites will send their visitors to your press release to read it. Now, these links may or may not last over a long period of time as newer news takes your press release's spot, but it's definitely a good tactic for building short term links to your site.

Remember, you want to build links that will drive quality traffic to your site, not just for the sake of search engine optimization.

February 5th is Monday (only a few days away)

Just a friendly reminder that Yahoo Search Marketing on Monday February 5th is swithing to their New Ranking Model (By new Model, I mean really similar to the Adwords model). Yahoo Search has had many links on how to get better results using their new Ranking Model, including these tips on how to prepare for the transition and this overview. It has been discussed at great length on other sites and blogs about how the New Ranking Model will work, but what I am most curious about is what are people doing about this transition. Is anyone nervous that info will be lost, or that Ads will be down for sometime Monday and into Tuesday and beyond? What are you doing about this transition, are you increasing your bids just to be on the safe side, have you been actively adjusting your ads to make sure you are getting good click through rates?

I, for one, am not that concerned, sure I have been optimizing our ads and bids, but I do that anyway. Do I plan to login early on Monday morning to check on the status of our accounts, of course, but I do that anyway. I just may get up an hour or two earlier, as they say.... The early bird gets the worm. If only Yahoo Search Marketing would have heeded that advice and made this switch along time ago.

I'll post early next week with updates on how the transition went.