Sometimes the most powerful things you can do to improve your PPC results is go back to the basics. One of the most important I've found is making sure that each Ad Group has a healthy list of negative keywords. Eliminating those useless impressions can make a big difference on your Click Through Rate, and even save you a few bucks from click-happy searchers who really didn't want your product, but clicked on you just because your ad was there.

Google makes it easiest to add negative keywords to your account. Their campaign-level negative keyword tool takes just a few minutes to add all the terms to all the Ad Groups with basically one click of a mouse. I've subsequently added specific negative keywords to certain Ad Groups to supplement my master list, but even if I don't get a chance to do that right away, I know I'm still protected from the bulk of unwanted impressions.

MSN is much easier to work with now than they were during beta-testing. Though negative keywords can only be added at the Order level, you can still cut and paste the entire list in one shot. My experience showed that with MSN this greatly reduced my number of impressions, but I'm still glad I did it because my ROI improved noticeably.

Yahoo is the only one that limits the number of negative keywords you can enter. The magic number is 90 - with 45 at the campaign level and 45 at the keyword level. Fortunately, by using the keyword selector tool, you can discover what terms are considered identical by Yahoo. For example, to Yahoo, "bill" and "bills" are the same word, but "billing" is different.

So if you don't have any negative keywords, consider building a list and entering them as soon as possible to improve your CTR. If you do have a list, when was the last time you checked it? I'm doing mine today.

Posted by at 04:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rand Fishkin at the Seomoz Blog gives us a glimpse into his company's online marketing efforts with his post Time Distribution for Effective Online Marketing. I suggest you read the full post, but here is his breakdown of how he thinks an online marketer's time should be spent:

40% Building Viral-Worthy, Authoritative Content
25% Developing New Features/Designs
10% Keyword, Industry & Competitive Research
10% Participating in Online Communities
10% Testing/Refining Based on Visitor Data
5% Manual Link Building

Pretty interesting stuff if you ask me. Rand is well known for his ability to develop successful viral content - so I can see why he would spend a lot of time there.

And speaking of viral content, make sure you check out our Insurance Blog's video wrap-ups...and while you are at it, forward the link to all of your friends...and tell them to send it to....and blog about it...help us out here. :)

Have a great weekend!

Posted by James Omdahl at 04:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Richard Ball of Apogee Web Consulting dives a little deeper into the click fraud issue in this post on his blog. He talks about ways of minimizing click fraud in the Google and Yahoo! content networks, but interestingly, he points out that not all click fraud is coming from the content network.

It turns out that some of the content partners that Yahoo and Google distribute their PPC ads through are not considered "content" partners and are actually part of the search network. What does this mean? It means that some of these search partners have the same incentive (a revenue share on clicks) that content partners do - and with that incentive comes the temptation to drive fraudulent clicks.

Now I will say that becoming a search distribution partner is (and should be) a lot harder than joining the Yahoo! Publishers Network or Google AdSense - and you would think the search engines would guard the gates when it comes to search distribution partners since that is key to their core business. However, Yahoo! has proven that they are willing to work with potentially sketchy partners in the search network (as described in a sidebar of the print version of BusinessWeek). Also, if I understood correctly, Richard points out that the PPC ads on parked domains might actually be coming through the search network, and not the content network.

If this is true, and some of the search traffic advertisers are paying for falls into what most of us would consider a content page, the search engines are going to have some unhappy advertisers on their hands. When I place search ads, I want them to show up on search engines and search engines only.

So make sure you read Richard article and utilize his suggestions for minimizing content network click fraud. And next time you talk to someone from Google or Yahoo! see if you can get an explanation of why your search ads are showing up on sites that aren't search engines.

Posted by James Omdahl at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Are you a new or struggling affiliate? Do you wonder if it is even possible to be successful as an affiliate? Do you want a super affiliate role model? Look no further my friends, because the person you are looking for is Vinny Lingham, the affiliate master of the Commission Junction (CJ) network.

I first saw Vinny at CJU a couple of years ago. I remember him because he seemed completely unafraid of asking questions and voicing his opinion - and because he was extremely knowledgeable. I wasn't really sure who he was, but you could tell he certainly was "somebody" in the CJ world.

Flash forward to this year's CJU. Vinny spoke on multiple panels including a great talk on taking your affiliate business international (Vinny's company IncuBeta is in the process of conquering Sweden and China). Mike and I also got a chance to speak with Vinny briefly at one of the networking events, which was a kick. I don't think we managed to convinced him to get into the US insurance lead business (something about the market being "crazy), but it was worth a shot :).

Anyway, the reason I am taking time to write about Vinny is because he is one of the few super affiliates that are willing to blog and publicly speak about affiliate marketing issues. That is good news for new affiliates, because he can give you a lot of insight into this challenging but rewarding business.

So if you are looking for an accessible affiliate role model, Vinny Lingham is your man. Make sure you check out his blog and keep an eye on his company IncuBeta.

Good Stuff!

Posted by James Omdahl at 04:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I try my hardest to get you the most important search engine marketing news on a daily basis. But hey, sometimes some important stuff slips through the cracks. That is where people like Barry Schwartz (aka RustyBrick) of Search Engine Roundtable come in.

Now I am telling you about Search Engine Roundtable's (SER) newsletter knowing that there is a distinct possibility that SER's daily newsletter will give you all of the search engine marketing news you can handle each day - which might keep you from visiting us here at the InsureMe Affiliate Blog, which will make we very, very sad. But I am hoping that is not the case, and I love you all enough to tell you that the SER daily newsletter is the business - so make sure you start getting it.

And for those affiliate managers out there who are thinking of starting a blog for your affiliates (I know you are out there), SER's newsletter is a must read for daily blog fodder.

Alright - make sure you check it out. You will thank me later. Just make sure you come back later, ok? :)

[p.s. the place to sign up for the newsletter is on the left side nav.]

Posted by James Omdahl at 04:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For the intellectually gifted I offer a puzzle of the highest order. Mensa acceptance guaranteed for decoding the following:

Please decode here.

Please respond with, ummm, anything that describes the indescribable.
Enjoy!

Keep on ...

Posted by James Harvey at 01:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just thought I would put my two cents in on the BusinessWeek Online article that James Harvey posted below. The article Click Fraud - The Dark Side of Online Advertising may (or may not) strike fear in the heart of online marketers, old and new. If you haven't taken time to read it, please do. It is long, but well worth the read.

Since I have heard that people like top ten lists on blogs, I thought I would give you my top ten impressions from the Click Fraud article:

1. It is nice to see a company like MostChoice.com (one of our competitors) taking the time to raise hell with Google and Yahoo!. Hopefully this will get some attention to insurance vertical when it comes to bad clicks.
2. I appreciated that the article focused on dirty content networks more than the old companies-clicking-on-competitors-ads kind of click fraud (bad click karma). While this type of thing happens, I don't think it as big of a deal as the content partner problem.
3. It is great to see that Google and Yahoo! continue to stick with their "we filter out most questionable clicks but we can't really tell you much more" line. Eventually, no one is going to buy this line, but hey, seems to work right now.
4. The conspiracy theorist love click fraud as a subject...as they should (see number three). The veil of secrecy the search engines keep up only fuels the fire.
5. It does seem strange to me that advertisers can see that a lot of these bad clicks are coming in from foreign countries, yet the search engines still argue that they are good clicks, even if you are just set up to advertise in the US. Seems like a pretty easy problem to fix.
6. Never overestimate the intelligence of click fraudsters - you've gotta love the couple that "dabbled" in click fraud to the tune of about $5,000 - and now they are telling BusinessWeek about it and are using their real names (as far as I can tell).
7. And to add insult to injury the patriarch or the click fraud couple says - "Whatever Google and Yahoo! are doing [to stop clickfraud], it's not having much of an effect." If this guy can figure it out how to dupe Google and Yahoo!, who can't?
8. It is amazing to think that 15% of all of your clicks are fake. Imagine how much your conversion/earnings would increase as an affiliate if all of your clicks were clean!
9. I would have liked BusinessWeek to mention that advertisers can be a angry as they want, but there is no alternative to Google and Yahoo!'s traffic. So is the pickle that advertisers are in - and the search engines know it.
10. And finally...there seems to a one infallible way to prevent getting charged for all of these bad clicks - avoid content match. Yes, I know that kind of sucks, but if you really hate click fraud, that will protect you from a lot of it. Internally, we do some content match, but it is not a widespread thing and has always been hit-and-miss at best. One thing I would say is if you are using content match, make sure you are using some type of conversion tracking application that can show you if your content clicks aren't converting. With that information you can weed out some of your more problematic keywords.

So what were your impressions from the article? Are you scared? Are you unworried? Are you pissed? Leave us a comment and let us know...

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A good look from the inside. How does it affect ordinary people ... like you and I? Well, you anyway. :-)

Read about it here.

Keep on people ..

Posted by James Harvey at 03:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Happy Friday to everyone!

Today is a special day for two reasons. One, we got our third and (in my humble opinion best) Insurance Blog Wrap-Up posted this afternoon. To see all three videos, go here.

Second, today we are moving our blogs to a new host. Yay! So, if you could, hold off on commenting 'till Monday when DNS is pointed to the new host. Thanks!

Have a great weekend affiliators.

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After my trip out to CJU last week, I realized that there is wildly important document that every advertiser and affiliate should have read by now. This is a relatively old document, but one that will help people grasp the social media phenomenon that is taking place right now.

The document is the Cluetrain Manifesto. The Manifesto was written in 1999, but the lessons from it resonate today as much as they did back during the dot com/dot bomb days. For affiliates, it should help you formulate your long-term business strategy (you have a long-term strategy, right?) And for advertisers, it should guide you to a new way of thinking about your business and the way that people interact with it.

I was really excited to hear Sara Fay, President of Isobar Communications, U.S. (who gave a great presentation by the way) plug the Manifesto in her speech at CJU. It looks like companies like Isobar are getting on the Cluetrain - and they are having a huge impact by doing so.

Please, if you haven't taken the time to read the Cluetrain Manifesto, do. It will change your life...

[P.S. - I know everyone who read the Manifesto back in the day is getting all smug right now. But seriously, after talking with dozens of affiliates and advertisers over the last week or so I really am realizing that most people are stuck in the shove-people-through-the-funnel, he-who-spends-the most-on-banner-ads-wins, add-no-value-and-expect-to-create-value world. It blows my mind - so I am laying out some of the fundamentals here...]

Posted by James Omdahl at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Just kidding.

I just got back into Denver and I am sifting through about 700 emails (no exaggeration). We really need to get a better spam filter.

While surfing around I did run across this Financial Times article that discusses some market skittishness yesterday around the announcement that Yahoo is experiencing demand weakness for display advertisements in the auto and financial services sectors. Some people are writing it off as cyclical, but many are selling shares in online marketing plays just to be safe.

I am sure we will all survive this terrifying collapse of the market :)

Alright, back to those emails!

Posted by James Omdahl at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, as quickly as it started, CJU is now officially over. I am sitting in the hotel lobby enjoying my last night at the Fess Parker Double Tree resort, which has got to be the best conference hotel around.

The conference went really well. While the sessions were interesting, especially the overall focus on relationships and social media, I would say the best thing about the conference was the people who attended. I got the opportunity to meet some really remarkable people who are passionate about online marketing. And for someone like me who is admittedly not the best "networker", CJU's focus on networking really allowed me to meet a ton more people than I normally do at a conference.

I also got to talk to a lot of people about blogs, which was awesome. I think there are so many companies out there right now considering blogging but are still too scared to take the leap of faith. As a fellow business blogger Durk told me, blogging is no where as hard as most companies make it out to be. I hope that at least some of the people that were in the blogging session at CJU will get involved and start blogging. And as I offered in the session, I am willing to help out anyone looking to start a business blog who needs it.

Thanks to everyone who showed up to the blogging session at the conference - I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed sharing the information with you.

Alright, time to hang with some of my fellow conferencers before bed time...I've got an early plane to catch...

Posted by James Omdahl at 09:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Who wants batteries powering your laptop, cellphone, etc. I want a full blown, gas powered beast cranking up when I am on the phone.

Here is comes: Gas Baby!

Keep on ...

Posted by James Harvey at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Mike, April and I are out here in smoky Santa Barbara at Commission Junction University. After a nice breakfast and a walk on the beach, we wandered into the first session C is for Cookie - a reference to the famous song by Mr. C. Monster. I am in the session now, learning about why no one should delete their cookies, how cookies are not at all evil, and getting a technical perspective on how cookies work and how you can make them work for you as an advertiser. Pretty straightforward stuff - but important stuff if you are working with CJ.

The next session is R is for Revenue - which used to be called R is for Relationships (or at least that is what I saw on an old agenda). I am not really sure why the name changed, but hopefully they will talk about building relationships to some extent. Relationships = good.

Oh yeah, the reason why I called this "smoky" Santa Barbara is because the air here is filled with smoke from a forest fire somewhere outside of Burbank. We actually flew over the fire last night on our way out here from Denver - a pretty spectacular sight...should have gotten a picture, but I didn't have time to get one. If you spend any time outside here you end up looking like you have some gnarly dandruff - and the sun is glowing orange - very eerie.

Alright, better get back to listening. If you are reading this and you are at CJU, please come up and introduce yourself. We are here to meet people, so don't be shy. :)

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You may have noticed a new addition to the InsureMe blogs since yesterday - del.icio.us badges at the end of our posts! You know when you have something on your list of things to do, and you are dreading it because you think it is going to be difficult to do, so you keep putting it off? That is how I was with the del.icio.us badges. But amazingly, adding the tags to all four of our blogs took maybe thirty minutes total. Totally painless. :)

Some of you might be wondering what del.icio.us is anyway, so I'll tell you, and give you a couple of sites to check out for more info. Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking/tagging service that allows users to "tag" webpages with "tags" (keywords). Once sites are tagged, other del.icio.us users can search through everyone's tags and find information that interests them. So imagine that I am a Yahoo! actually purchased del.icio.us a while back and it is one of the crown jewels in Yahoo!'s Web 2.0 portfolio. For more info on del.icio.us, check out the del.icio.us about us page and the Wikipedia entry.

So what is the value of del.icio.us to an affiliate? Well, if you are producing quality content, allowing people to easily add your content to del.icio.us might give you broader exposure on the net - for free. Of course, the content has to be really good for that to happen, but I know a lot of our affiliates are focusing on quality content, so this might be an opportunity to increase traffic. I see adding del.icio.us badges as a must have for our affiliates that operate blogs (good ones, not spammy ones).

The main point is this - if you are spending time creating quality content adding badges like del.icio.us and digg to the end of your content will give your readers a opportunity to expose your content to a wider audience - and who doesn't want that?

If you are interested in using del.icio.us to increase your content's exposure, follow this thread from the Search Engine Watch forums.

If you need help adding del.icio.us badges to your site, feel free to send me an email and we can talk about it.

Posted by James Omdahl at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This morning I was able to login to Microsoft AdCenter just fine and then about an hour ago *POOF* AdCenter is broken. It still isn't back up. I have been hitting the refresh button so much my finger is sore. I want to get my numbers from yesterday so I can move on with my life.

C'mon Microsoft - I know you are all excited about taking Microsoft Live out of beta, but put down your celebratory piece of cake and fix AdCenter. We are all waiting...

[Update - of course as soon as I hit the publish button AdCenter starts working again...]

[Update 2 - then it stopped working again two minutes later]

Posted by James Omdahl at 09:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you are like me, you go through some severe emotional trauma when you are checking to see how your AdWords ads are operating. I mean, from time to time you are going to want to click on your own Google ad to make sure a) it is going to the right page and b) the transition to your site is quick and smooth. So when you go to hit the button you always have to ask yourself, is making sure this ad works really worth the $X.XX it is going to cost me?

We fret not my Pay-Per-Click Compadres. Google has come out with Google Preview - a place you can go and click on links without getting yourself, or others, charged for it.
And as an added bonus you can check your competitor's ads and landing pages without getting that feeling of guilt that you just cost them money.

You get that guilt...right?

:)

Thanks to the SEO Roundtable for the link...

[UPDATE! Ugh - I was wrong - turns out you can't click on the ads to get to the landing page. Which is totally lame if you ask me. But at least you can see where your ad is without ringing up an impression, right?]

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The five year anniversary of 9/11. Amazing to think it has been five years already.

We all deal with the reality of that day in different ways. I found the blog posts and audio tapes from Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine, who was at the World Trade Center on that day, to be a good way to remember and pay tribute to the people that lost their lives and loved ones that day.

Posted by James Omdahl at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This has nothing to do with SEO, but it is just too good.

I will let you simply enjoy it here.

Have a great weekend!

Posted by James Harvey at 03:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ross Dunn at Search Engine Guide wrote a must-read article for those of you who are starting to think about search engine optimization (SEO) or are beginners in the SEO world. Ross goes over the things that you need to check to make sure your pages are search engine friendly.

On his list of topics are:

• Frames


• Flash


• Dynamic URLs


• Menus


• Sitemaps


• Layout


• Splash Pages (aka - the kiss of death)

If you are and SEO beginner, please read the article. It could save you a lot of grief in the future.

Posted by James Omdahl at 09:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

[Warning - I am posting information on this without any knowledge if this seminar will be good or if any of the products this guy is selling are good or even real. I am posting this because it sounds like the Teleseminar will be interesting and I know that Dave Taylor is not a scammer. Ok - you have been warned :) ]

The lovely and talented InsureMe affiliate manager April Hartmeister got an email today from a fellow named Mark Widawer. Mark is putting on the Googleicious Teleseminar which is happening tomorrow at noon. The topics of discussion will be copywriting for better conversion, Google natural search and Google AdWords.

Since Mark's email has all the details, I will go ahead and reprint it here, minus the hyperlinks...

Hello April,

P.S. If you want help with almost every area of your marketing, including tracking and statistics, testimonials, offers, layout, testing and more. . . and if you need some marketing and technical support -- then look at the Premium Edition of the Landing Page Cash Machine. It's what you need.

If you are interested in being a part of the Googleicious Teleseminar go here to sign up. It looks like if you sign up today you can get on the call for about 20 smackers. Mark will also try to push his Landing Page Cash Machine products on that page as well...and with a landing page like that, who needs enemies? ;)

Posted by James Omdahl at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The SEO world is buzzing about the Google patent application that seems to be trying to patent the process of using human editors as a part of the ranking algorithm. Interesting stuff since Google is known for its mathematical approach to search.

I found this part particularly interesting:

In extreme cases, the applicable editorial opinion parameter may cause the web page to be moved to the top of the ranked list or removed from the list completely. In another case, the applicable editorial opinion parameter of a web site may selectively affect one of the scores used in determining the final ranking (e.g., the text match score, the connectivity-based score, or the popular opinion score).

For a good breakdown on the subject here are some links:

SEO by the Sea's Post
Technical Chat on the Cre8asite Forums
The Google Patent Application

I know I am OK with having human eyes on our site, but I am not so sure I like that for what it might mean for some affiliates. Are any affiliates out there concerned? Are affiliates even trying to rank on Google anymore? Let me know.

Posted by James Omdahl at 04:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I tell you, these suits just burn me up. This lady clicks on her own ads, gets caught and her adsense campaign shutdown ... just like Google says it will be in the T&C. She is suing and stating she has suffered "irreparable harm". Interesting as she does not have a shopping cart ... just a "check back later" statement.

Read about it here.

Crazy people out there. Keep on.

Posted by James Harvey at 02:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)