Archive for the 'news' Category
The AdWords Blog just announced a brand new blog today: Let’s Take it Offline.
Let’s Take it Offline is Google’s traditional media blog. Here is a quick excerpt from the announcement:
“Today, we’re pleased to announce that the TV, Print, and Audio Ads teams have launched Let’s Take it Offline, the official blog to help you get the most out of your offline ad campaigns. Our traditional media blog will keep you up-to-date on the latest feature launches, product updates, tips, and industry findings.”
You can learn more about the traditional media that is available from Google here: TV, Print and Audio.
Traditional media campaigns can be started directly through the AdWords Campaign Summary page - simply scroll to the bottom of the page, underneith all of your regular AdWords campaigns and you will see something that looks like this:
Click on the links to the right of each of the above menu items to start and remember to measure your offline efforts! 
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With the announcement yesterday that Google now has improved indexing for Flash websites, the SEO world may see changes in the not so distant future. According to Google Webmaster Central, the new algorithm in place can index “All of the text that users can see as they interact with your Flash file. If your website contains Flash, the textual content in your Flash files can be used when Google generates a snippet for your website. Also, the words that appear in your Flash files can be used to match query terms in Google searches.”
While the algorithm doesn’t read .FLV files, it does read the text and links in .SWF files and adds them to the Google index.
Besides the obvious ramifications for SEO, in which building a site entirely in Flash was previously detrimental, perhaps this will lead to a future integration of the Flash indexing algorithm with the Adwords algorithm.
Google AdWords’ Landing Page Guidelines state that having relevant and original content on landing pages is vital to an acceptable landing page and good quality score (which translates into lower cost per click). At present, if you use Flash for your landing page, in order to achieve a good quality score, “you have to build an underbelly,” as Search Engine Roundtable put it. Otherwise your flash content does not help your ad copy in terms of relevance.
Could this mean that all-Flash landing pages used with Google Adwords ads will soon be readable by the Adwords algorithm? If Google can read the text in Flash, then high quality scores can possibly be achieved on Flash landing pages (once they integrate this algorithm into Adwords). This will let advertisers develop highly creative, interactive landing pages while maintaining low minimum bids/high quality scores.
It remains to be seen what will happen with Flash and the Paid Search industry, but we hope these changes come over to the PPC side quickly and efficiently.
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David Szetela, the ‘godfather’ of ppc, interviewed me yesterday for the PPC Rockstar show on webmasterradio.fm.
It’s been archived now so you can listen to the show for free here!
I’m slicing up the slide show that we discussed in the show to give more details and I will be posting a series of 5-7 minute videos on expanding and contracting your keyword list.
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AdWords announced The Retirement of the Pay-Per-Action beta because of the new Google Affiliate Network:
“The Google Affiliate Network, previously known as DoubleClick Performics Affiliate, has been in operation since 1998. Through the network, advertisers can open their ads to all publishers in the network, or select specific publishers that match their criteria. You can set a CPA for your entire campaign or establish custom payment schedules for specific publishers — such as a higher CPA for a particularly optimal placement. The Google Affiliate Network is currently a separate product from AdWords and AdSense. As with AdSense, publishers must apply and be accepted into the network.”
Google’s Affiliate Network merges two services: DoubleClick’s Performics Affiliate network and Google’s Pay Per Action network.
A few opinions that have been posted about this change:
John of PPC Hero.com fame writes about the inconvenience of the PPA/Performics integration
Aaron Wall Says The Integration Has Been A Bit Haphazard So Far
PepperJam’s CEO Kris Questions Whether Or Not The Other Affiliate Networks Stand A Chance or Could This Move Simply Lend A Hand Of Extra Credibility to the Affiliate Industry?
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Barry Schwartz noted a couple days ago and again today on Search Engine Land that the Overture Keyword Tool is finally gone for good. Barry emailed Yahoo! and they confirmed that the tool is not coming back.
The original Overture keyword tool site now redirects you to Yahoo! Search Marketing.
Now you have to get a Yahoo! Search Marketing account to get an idea about how Yahoo! will match keywords or analyze urls for keyword lists…simply make a $30 deposit and you can have access to Yahoo!’s keyword research tools.
If you’re already signed up with Yahoo!, simply go into an existing ad group or create a new adgroup to use their keyword generation and bid/traffic estimation tools.
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Giovanna, wife of SEObook’s Aaron Wall, launched the website, ppcblog.com yesterday, and choruses of cheering Internet marketing nerds erupted from cubicles around the world. After reading great material that Giovanna has contributed at SEObook, like The Blogger’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization and her reviews of conferences like PPC Summit, it was only a matter of time before she dove all the way into the PPC world.
PPCBlog.com seems like a great way to do it!
We’re excited to see what happens, and hopefully to contribute as well. It’s refreshing to hear more voices in the PPC community, and we’d just like to raise ours in congratulations to Giovanna in light of her new launch.
Here are a few of Giovanna’s recent posts:
Review of Google Ad Planner: Site Targeting Cheat Sheet
Who Chopped off PPC’s Long Tail?
What Exactly Are You Marketing?
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This is my tentative schedule for live blogging what I can at SMX Advanced…I’m really excited to be attending this year!
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
9:15 - 10am Keynote - Kevin Johnson, President, Platform & Services Division, Microsoft
10:45 - 12pm - Blow Your Mind Link Building Techniques
1:30 - 2:45pm - Creating Value in Your SEM Businesses
3:15 - 4:30pm - Closing the Loop: Are You Tracking Every Lead?
5:00 - 5:30pm - You&A with Matt Cutts
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
9-10am - Search Marketing & Surviving A Recession
10:45 - 12pm - What You Should Be Measuring But Aren’t
1:45 - 3pm - Bid Management Today
I can’t blog about the last session for 30 days…so I won’t list it here.
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This is a work in progress…
But here it is!
The SEM Daily Reading page at semvironment!!!!!
I plan on adding 15 - 30 of the top blogs in the industry to this page - obviously leaning towards pay per click marketing with a healthy dose of SEO.
Yes - it is similar to p*purls while significantly different. What do you think?
Visit every day for your daily SEM fix…enjoy!
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It’s an honor to write for a powerful audience like you. Readers are the best reason for us to share our thoughts, ideas, opinions and more.
You already know that the blog has been on a half-hiatus type of a schedule for the past month or two…with awesome roundups and a few relatively decent posts in between. The industry is booming and more people are blogging about the subject of pay per click advertising than ever before!
I am going to take a bigger hiatus so I can finish a ppc management book that I’ve been working on for a while. I hope to have the book done in 2 or 3 weeks!! Hooray!! The title is: PPC Management - A Beginner’s Guide. This book will actually serve as our in-house training manual but I thought I should make it available to everybody! While I have been writing the beginner’s book I already started on the outline for the next book that I hope to have done by the end of 3Q or beginning of 4Q entitled: PPC Management - An Advanced Guide…I think I will make that available to everybody too.
While I am writing the book, which will be 100% FREE (100+ pages!) to you and your friends, the blog is going to be neglected a little bit…the schedule will mostly consist of our favorite roundup posts and a few tidbits of helpful/useful ppc information. Then, the book will be officially announced and you will have full and complete access to it for FREE. And I’ll be back on track with regular ppc advertising tips and tricks after the book is done.
Nude posts that I have been promising will be posted over the next several months - here is what you can expect:
NUDE: The Insider’s Keyword Expansion Technique
The Insider’s Keyword Expansion Technique is a ‘leave your losses behind’ and ‘maximize your gains’ approach to keywords that has worked tremendously for us. The post will include a bit of info about grouping and keyword intent. We will share a case study about one of our clients and how we were able to cut costs in half and double their lead volume within the first 60 days of management using this technique.
NUDE: Mirroring Google’s Success On Yahoo! and MSN
A detailed guide to replicating your success on Google in Yahoo! and MSN…we share our secrets to rapidly mirroring your Google campaigns, ads, keywords and more in Yahoo! and MSN within a couple hours or less!
NUDE: The Definitive Guide To Your Quality Scores
Or an alternative title could be: How to get your Quality Score minimum bid to .05 or less on every single keyword when you manage thousands of keywords in each campaign.
And now for semvironment updates -
+Officially launching 3 out of 6 e-commerce websites this week. Here are a few stats: over 100 products and counting, very niche products, general category of products is ‘outdoor home goods and accessories’
+Developing a fantastic tool for e-commerce pay per click advertising…expected launch date is sometime in June/July. We expect this tool to be a cornerstone to our future suite of tools if it takes off as expected.
Thanks for tuning in this time - our next post will be a roundup and there have been some excellent stories over the past week!
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Wow, I was stoked to read this story from Dennis Mortensen’s Blog (IndexTool COO) today:
“Summary:
Yahoo! currently intends to provide the IndexTools Web Analytics service FREE of charge to clients and partners who accept the standard Yahoo! agreement.
Today we will communicate that we’ll require our partners and clients to accept a new standard Yahoo! agreement and that Yahoo! (we) currently intends to provide the service FREE of charge to clients and partners who accept the Yahoo! Agreement. It is however important to note that our clients and partners must accept this agreement to continue using the service.”
Why am I so excited for IndexTools analytics?
It’s an enterprise class analytics system that will give us more insight, a competitive edge, and extremely useful tools in addition to Google Analytics and Microsoft’s Gatineau Analytics.
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