Today I was going to talk a bit about the Yahoo Conversion Counter…which basically serves the same purpose as the Google Conversation Tracking tool. The thing is, with the Yahoo Panama update coming out, I have no idea what the Conversion Counter is going to look like once Panama is fully rolled out. So for that reason I figured I would go in a different direction.

Hopefully yesterday’s post got you excited about using tracking scripts. They really are a PPC affiliate’s best friend when used correctly. And with that in mind, I thought it would be helpful to give you some tips for using your tracking script data.

So without any further ado:

Read the rest of this entry »

A small sidetrack from Tracking Week here - but I found this blog post and the comments that follow it too good not to share.

There is a great post and discussion going down over at the SEOmoz Blog that discusses purchased text link ads and there effect (if any) on your SEO rankings. Rand points out that the company Text Link Ads (TLA) openly displays the sites that they sell links on, and guesses that Google probably scans the inventory and discounts the links from all of TLA’s sites.

In the comments section there is a lot of information posted by Jarrod Hunt, who runs TLA’s main competitor Text Link Brokers (TLB). There are a lot of comments, but I would suggest reading them…there are some interesting nuggets in there.

Interestingly enough, it sounds like TLA may not be looking at themselves as a company that sells links for SEO, but instead they are a contextual marketing company - although their site might lead you to think differently. It would be nice if TLA would have told its advertisers about this change in methodology, even if it would have cost them some money.

Alright, go read the post here.

Now that I have rambled on about tracking your work through your InsureMe affiliate account, I want to talk about another form of tracking that could be one of the most powerful tools in your PPC arsenal. The tool?

Google Conversion Tracking.

When we started doing pay-per-click marketing about three and a half years ago, we always found it kind of difficult to really understand what was and what wasn’t working. I mean, we could look at our Campaigns and see what are conversion rates were - and we could also see that for AdGroups if we set them up with a unique tracking number in the AdGroup. But beyond that, we were really flying blind. We really had no clue which keywords were really performing for us and which were not. Without really understanding what was successful and what was not on a granular basis, we also had a hard time figuring out best practices on Google.

I’m happy to say that that’s not the case anymore - and we can thank the Google Conversion Tracking tool for the change. Now when we sign into our Google AdWords account we can see the exact conversion rate for every single keyword we have (and there are thousands).

Read the rest of this entry »

For the first Tracking Week post, I want to talk about tracking as it pertains to InsureMe affiliates. So I guess what I am saying is this stuff is going to mean a lot more to our affiliates than it will to non-affiliates.

Just as some basic information for people unfamiliar with InsureMe’s internal tracking system - InsureMe uses different links with “refby” numbers attached to them to track our affiliate’s leads. Every affiliate is able to create a virtually unlimited number of links if they prefer. Also, our affiliates can group together their links into “campaigns,” which are basically just a way of ordering links so they display grouped in our reporting.

Anyway, on to tracking…

One thing that always surprises me when I look at affiliate’s accounts is the vast differences in the way they set up their tracking links. We have some affiliates who use hundreds of links with cryptic names like “Glink5,” we have a lot of affiliates with a dozen or so links with different names like “Homepage Link” and then we have the affiliates who have one link for their entire account (some very large affiliates, in fact). Overall, it seem like the only thing that is consistent when it comes to people setting up links in their affiliate account is general inconsistency.

And that is just fine - whatever works for our affiliates works just fine for us. But with that in mind, I do want to tell you an effective way to utilize our internal tracking schema. We use a similar system for our internal tracking here at InsureMe, and through much trial and error we have found a system that helps us effectively keep tabs on our PPC and SEO efforts (although I am really going to focus on the PPC side in this post).

Read the rest of this entry »

I ran across an article from eMarketer titled Pay-Per-Click Not-So-Easy today and thought one of the stats was really interesting…in a scary way. In a survey of online marketers who have been using PPC for at least the last two years, 27% admitted that they did not know their cost of conversion for their PPC campaigns.

Pretty crazy, huh? To me that means they are setting up PPC accounts tossing money into the black hole we all know as the Intarweb.

Well guess what folks, tossing money into online marketing and NOT tracking your results is not so smart (read: dumb). Online marketing is the most trackable form of marketing on the planet…and if you ain’t tracking, you ain’t living up to your full potential.

And since being a successful affiliate isn’t easy (yes, I said it), you need to do whatever you can to be your best as an online marketer.

So with that in mind, I dub this week Tracking Week (YAY!). And this being the first ever theme week for the InsureMe Affiliate Blog, I hope not to disappoint (or forget to post).

My post this week will cover four topics:

• Using InsureMe’s tracking capabilities to better understand your PPC performance
• Tracking Google Adwords with the Google Conversion Counter
• Tracking Yahoo Search Marketing with the Yahoo Conversion Tracking tool
• Tracking your SEO efforts

Hopefully Tracking Week will rule, and help some of you get a better understanding of your online marketing efforts. Please leave a comment if there is a tracking related subject you would like me to cover.

Thanks! Happy Monday.

Remember that new ads diagnostic tool I told you about in last weeks post that lets you know whether or not an ad is running for a particular keyword youre bidding on in Google? Well, Ive discovered thats not all that little tool will do. Check this out….

Improving our ads is something we can all stand to do from time to time. But before now, you had to click on your ad (and pay for that click) to get a birds eye view of what it actually looked like on the search results page. But now, Googles making this part of PPC a bit easier (and cheaper) by letting you view your ad surrounded by those of your competitors—without creating an impression.

Being able to see your ad amongst others shown for a particular term lets you know where you are in relation to your competitors on that keyword (which helps in your bidding strategies). It also allows you to put yourself in consumers shoes and see exactly what they see when conducting a search based on your term—without costing you a cent.

As far as Im concerned, this is a huge development for paid search.

So how do your ads stack up? To take a look:

• hover your cursor over the magnifying glass next to a keyword on your ad group details page
• click on “What Do I Do?” in the pop-up box displayed
• choose the “Preview Search Results…” link for that term

What do you think? Are your ads distinctive enough to stand out? Are your competitors ads better than yours? If you were Joe Consumer, which link would you pursue—and why? Use this free preview screen to find out—and make your ads the best they can be!

Since it is Thanksgiving tomorrow, a couple of us walked around the office and asked InsureMe employees what they are thankful for. The video below is the end result. Hopefully it will bring you some Turkey Day cheer.

I also want to add that we are thankful for our fantastic affiliate partners and all the wonderful things we accomplished with them in 2006. You might have noticed that a lot of people mentioned that they were happy about their jobs at InsureMe (we actually had to tell people to stop saying they were thankful for InsureMe). Please know that if you are an InsureMe affiliate partner, your hard work is a big part of what keeps our business going, and we are all thankful for that!

Happy Thanksgiving!

[Note: Sorry about the cheese-ball background music in advance. Royalty free music has its limitations!]

With the end of the year coming, it has been a bit slow in the affiliate world. Aside from a kinda-sorta change in Google’s organic rankings (some reports say Google’s results are looking almost as bad as MSN’s in certain verticals *gasp*), this week has been, well, boring.

Never fear fair affiliators, the lull in excitement brings out the best in affiliate and online marketing bloggers…maybe not me, but other bloggers.

Want proof? Check out Randfish’s Cliches in the SEO World over at SEOmoz. A couple of my favorites are:

MSN/Yahoo!/Google/Ask Sucks

They usually “suck” because theyre not sending you traffic and then, when you finally get things right on your site, they suddenly “rule.”

And…

Ive Been Thinking of Going White Hat

One of your big sites got banned and suddenly youre thinking that hard work and unique content and hours of labor are more attractive than 3 hours at the computer every night on your $1K-per-day churn and burns… Why am I skeptical?

The full list is pretty funny, especially if you ever attended a search marketing conference, where you’ll hear at least two of these clich

During all the hubbub last week about Googles quality score changes, I discovered a tool within that engine thats really helpful for keeping tabs on how well your keywords and their ads are working. Its something relatively new called the “Ads Diagnostic Tool,” and you can find it next to the status column on your ad group pages within your campaigns.

Just hover your cursor over the magnifying glass next to each of your key terms, and a pop-up window will load that actually gives you quite a bit of information, including:

• whether or not an ad is showing for that
  term
• whether or not its ranking high enough to be displayed on the first search-results page
• the settings youve selected for that key term, including display language and target location

If a term isnt working—or you see youve made a mistake in your settings—this tool makes it easy to see so all in one place, and then quickly make changes by ad group.

If your ads arent showing on the first page of search results, you can click on an “Ad Diagnostic Tool” link in that same pop-up window. This will help you find out why your ads arent showing and give you possible solutions. (You can check terms either by ad or by the URL of the search terms page where you believe it should be displayed, whichever youd like.)

Knowing the status of a key term is important; but being able to see how well that term is working (or not!) is even more important. The ads diagnostic tool gives you all that information in one quick glance.

So…how well are your terms and ads working? Check out the ads diagnostic tool and find out!

We just got our new InsureMe mascot costume, and we want to show it off. Actually, I say we just got it, but we had one for quite a while now, except the head got crushed in shipping. So we got the replacement head, and all is good.

Below is the full length dance scene from today’s InsureMe Insurance Blog Wrap-Up. Thanks to our favorite accountant Eric (aka the Ugandan Twista) for showing us how he gets down in the I-Guy.

InsureMe…alright.

[Update: This is also a little victory dance since InsureMe was just recognized by the Denver Business Journal as the second best medium-sized company to work for in Denver!]

[UPDATE: If you are a little lost on the whole Quality Score idea, or if you just want to read some great info on the subject, I highly recommend Evolution of the Quality Score parts 1 and 2 by Jay Weintraub. Also, for those more technically inclined, ShoeMoney talks about masking your links...which could save you for the time being.]

Thanks to our super best friends over at the Inside AdWords blog we now have a teeny tiny bit more insight into the recent AdWords Quality Score changes.

Here are the three questions and my summarized answer (slightly rephrased to capture my morning sarcasm):

Did the AdWords team know they were stealing Christmas by rolling out the Quality Score changes right before the holiday season?

Short answer: Yes, but that’s how they roll.

Since click-through-rates and conversion on my website are really good indicators of consumer satisfaction with content, will you be including my Google Conversion Counter or Google Analytics data in your calculation of Quality Score?

Short answer: Nah, even though good click through and conversions usually mean someone found what they are looking for*, we would rather use a complex algorithm that only looks at content. We do this because it will impress our fellow Stanford alumni and make us look cool down in the Google cafeteria.

Will using Website Optimizer, Google’s tool that helps people improve the quality of advertiser’s landing pages, help my landing page’s Quality Score?

Short answer: No, doing something like that would make our Quality Score calculation less mysterious and vague, and then advertisers would have nothing to freak out about over the holiday season…and where’s the fun in that.

Wow, I am pretty sarcastic this morning. Feel free to check out the actual questions and answers on the Inside AdWords blog.

Seriously though, I know Google has a reason for what they do and how they do it, and I respect them for focusing on the searcher’s experience. Still, knowing they have reasons for what they do doesn’t make it hurt and less when you get burned.

For an added bonus, I want to point you to a post from Steve Bryant called Top 5 Google Weaknesses. And no, kryptonite is not one of them. (Thanks to Big Pete S. for the link!)

* before someone points it out, I know that if conversion data was used for quality score it would be very easy to game the system…but I am sure the mega-brains at Google could figure out how to get around the problem.

I am still looking around for opinions on the new changes to Quality Score on AdWords (thanks to those who have left comments on yesterday’s post). I actually ran into a different theory that is a whole lot less scary than the “Google-targeting-affiliates” theory.

You can check the thread over at the Search Engine Watch forums, but to summarize, it basically says that Google is not really targeting affiliates as much as it is targeting AdSense arbitrage sites (websites that bit on keywords on Google, then display Google AdSense ads on their site in hopes that they can make more from their AdSense clicks than they can spend on their AdWords ads).

It would be hard to argue that AdSense arbitrage sites are “high quality results” (but if anyone wants to try, please leave a comment), so I am all for Google cleaning up the arbitrage problem. Of course, if all Google was targeting were sites that display AdSense (and Y!PN ads), they should be able to pretty easily spot the code with the AdWords bot and target only arbitrage affiliates.

But it seems like Google is going further and looking for pages that just have low quality content…which might be why non-AdSense affiliates are feeling some pain at this point. If that is the case, it makes me think the changes at Google might be aimed at more than just AdSense sites…but I’m not really sure.

So what do you think? Leave a comment and weigh in.

We have been in contact with some affiliates who are feeling the effects of the Google AdWord’s Quality Score changes mentioned earlier today by Penny (great post Penny!).

I looked around a bit to see if I could find a large amount of “oh my God - Google killed my site” type-chat and I didn’t see anything too widespread at this point. It does seem that some affiliates are feeling the effects, but from what I can tell, those affiliates have sites that aren’t what Google might consider “content-rich.”

Scott Jangro posted his theory about the changes — surmising that “thin” landing pages would be the real victim of the recent PPC housecleaning at Google. He also thinks that people using “thin” landing pages will be forced to continuously rebuild new sites as soon as Google zaps their current site.

This is an interesting theory, and I hope it is correct. But there is also another theory…it is what I like to call the “wake-me-up-in-a-cold-sweat” theory. Are you ready for it? (You might want to make sure your little affiliates are out of the room before you click).

Read the rest of this entry »

In an effort to improve user experience, Google has begun making changes related to how AdWords evaluates landing page quality. Starting this past week, it has begun incorporating landing page quality into advertisers’ quality scores on contextually-targeted ads (this is already done on search ads), and improving its algorithm for evaluating landing page quality.

For sites with poor quality content, this will affect bids, ads and keywords.

But lets back up just a bit. In case you were wondering…

What are quality scores?

According to Google, the “quality score” is the basis for measuring the quality and relevance of ads and determining minimum CPC bids for both Google and the search network.

How are they determined?

Using click-through-rates, as well as the relevance of ad text, keywords, and landing pages.

How will this affect your campaigns? If providing quality information on your landing pages is something you work hard at, it probably wont. In fact, as with its last update in July, Google says these changes will affect only a very small portion of advertisers; the vast majority won’t be affected at all (*sigh).

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a while since a tracked down a new tool for you fine affiliates, so I decided to take a look around this morning. After a little searching I found a really cool tool that was made by Aaron Wall, aka SEO Book, aka OG Playa SEO (ok, I made that last one up).

The tool is called the SEO Book Keyword Suggestion tool, but should be called SEOBook’s Super Ninja Tool of Keyword Destiny (Aaron - I will let you use that name at no charge). Calling this tool simply a keyword suggestion tool would be giving it too little credit - it is more like a keyword Swiss Army knife.

All you do is type in a keyword and you get information from:

• Yahoo! Search Marketing
• Google
• WordTracker
• Keyword Discovery
• Regional Search Volume Estimates (Google Labs)
• Bid Prices (Yahoo!)

But hey, why are you reading about this tool, you should be using it! Thanks to the kindness of OG Playa…ah…Aaron, anyone is able to add the tool to their site. So here it is on ours!

If you are a bit of a shoe freak, you might want to pass on this post, because Like.com could make your life a whole lot more expensive. But from a search technology standpoint, I gotta tell you about it.

Like.com calls itself a “visual search engine,” but don’t get confused, it is not an image search like Google images. Like.com is a search engine that can “see” products and group them together based on shape, color and pattern. What does that mean? Let me try to explain.

Let’s say I am looking for a new pair of cow-pie stompin’ cowboy boots. First thing I do from the Like.com homepage is select “shoes”. From the main menu. On the next page I would pick the type of shoe. So under “Men’s Shoes” I would select “Boots.” Now I have a bunch of pictures of boots. Nothing too exciting, but stick with me, the cool part is coming.

I look for a boot that looks like boots I might want, or at least the boots have some of the characteristics of my ideal boot. When I find one, I click on “Likeness Search” button under the picture of the boot. The boot is then loaded up into a page that asks what you like about the item.

You have multiple options at this point. You can highlight an area of the boot that you think looks cool, or pick a color that you want the boots to be, or you can indicate that you like the overall shape boot. By giving Like.com your preference information it will come back with products that match better march what you like. You can also adjust the importance of color, shape and pattern to narrow your search. Really neato!

But enough about my hunt for killer cowboy boots, go ahead and try to find the accessories of your dreams. I don’t know if Like.com is going to revolutionize the way people search online - but if perfected, this technology could really help people find what they want when shopping online.

If anything, it will help me find a new pair of size 14’s.

Catchy headline, eh?

I was checking out the Search Engine Watch forums and ran across a link to a really good Wired Magazine article called “Attack of the Bots.” The article talks about “botnets” that are used for distributed denial-of-service attacks, and the potential that botnets will bring the Internet to its knees (does the Internet have knees?)

Interesting stuff. If you have a few minutes, give it a read.

The article just barely touches on the subject of distributed denial-of-service attacks being used against PPC companies - but I would be interested to know if the botnetters would be able to successfully take down Google or Yahoo’s PPC operations (the article says yes).

Actually, what am I saying…Yahoo is good enough at taking down their own PPC operations. No need for botnetters to waste their time on that.

I do want to say that Wired seems to enjoy posting alarmist articles, which is why I don’t read it regularly. A great example was their Spam + Blogs = Trouble article from a couple of months ago, which proclaimed that spam blogs would destroy the blogoshpere, the search engines, and maybe let the air out of your car’s tires when you weren’t looking. I guess my point is to take the article with a grain of salt.

Have a good Wednesday!

As those of you who dabble in pay-per-click know, setting up new ad groups in search engines requires providing both a display URL and a destination URL.Though your destination URL is usually just your sites Web address, did you know your display URL can read any way you want it to?

For those of you who may not know, your destination URL is simply your sites addy, or where youd like to send those visitors who click on your ad. On the other hand, your display URL is the addy that shows up under your paid search ad; and the two may or may not read the same.

Thats right; though best practice would be to include your site name in your display URL (for the sake of name recognition), the search engines allow you to customize your ads display URLs with any content you wish. For example, you could identify your ads by insurance type, according to the content on that particular landing page (e.g. http://www.insureme.com/lifeinsurance). Or, you could classify your display URLs by subject (such as http://www.insureme.com/studenthealth). You can even add modifiers like price terms (http://www.insureme.com/cheaphealthinsurance).

Basically, inserting any information that might help you convert searchers into leads is a good idea. So get creative and experiment with your display URLs, testing one type against another. Using this customization technique may just help increase your site traffic!

The lovely and talented April Hartmeister found a really cool page on About.com with good links to affiliate marketing resources, so I thought I would pass the link on to you. Here it is.

Also, make sure you take a quick glance at the InsureMe Video Blog for today for a good laugh or two (at least I hope you will laugh).

Have a great weekend. Stay in school. Stop, drop and roll.

In the early days of paid search, people churned out articles with no real substance and “stuffed” them with their keyword phrases. (If you are still writing your landing pages that way, please stop now.) Ads were riddled with cheesy sales pitches and exclamation points. A few relics from the early days still remain. But as the competition increases, the survivors have had to change their ways.

Take a few minutes to peruse some blogs dedicated to cracking the PPC code; you’ll quickly realize everyone has their own recipe for success. It seems particular strategies work in certain combinations in different search engines.

And then a month later, they don’t. Oh, I don’t know if the landscape changes that fast. But it is constantly changing as search engines attempt to improve their business models to better serve the users, which, let’s face it, is actually good when you’re on the other end of things. It’s hard to keep up and to figure out which combination produces the most lucrative results.

One way to stay ahead of the learning curve is to keep reading about the multitude of strategies, choose the best ideas out there and test them. Conducting an A/B test in Google is a relatively simple way to discover what really works.

Just create a new campaign in Google and in user preferences, select “show ads more equally.” Now you can create two ads and direct them toward different landing pages to test how well your content converts. Or you can have two similar ads with different titles and see which gets you a better click through rate.

In the ever-changing world of online marketing, testing should become your secret weapon. Keep in mind; it’s impossible to hold all variables constant. So do your best to create a valid test with only one variable. And look at trends rather than for specific changes.

Two items this morning — both about SEO.

First off, I got a Google alert this morning with a link to a webpage that was using the word “InsureMe” in the text. I am always curious to see who may be linking to us or using our name to promote their site, so I clicked through to the page. When I got there I found a textbook example of keyword stuffing.

Check out this page and see if you can guess what keyword this person is optimizing for.

Anyone?

Also, Web Marketing Today has an article from Eric Ward, the original gangsta of link building (thats him in the picture on the right). Eric was building links for Amazon.com back when Amazon’s shipments were sent out on the Pony Express.

The article, Artificial Linking and Search Rankings, is a warning to anyone who buys links, trades links, or exchanges their soul for good links (and who hasn’t done that before).

Take heed, fair optimizers, when Eric Ward speaks, ye shalt listen.

Yesterday I submitted our Yahoo Search Marketing account to the early transition process to the “Panama” ad platform. Who knows how long we will be waiting for the official “green light” from the transition team to start preparing to be moved, but hopefully it will be soon.

I was kind of happy and kind of sad to see that Search Optimizer is going the way of the dinosaurs, since we have been using it since early beta. But at the same time, it never really seemed to work perfectly, and hopefully Panama will work better for us.

If you are planning on making the move to the Panama platform early, be warned that there are some things you will have to do, like download your account, before you are switched over. Seems a bit lame that Yahoo would make its advertisers do extra work to make the transition, but I know it is a very different ad platform (YAY!) and hopefully it will be worth it in the end. Get more info on making the transition here (PDF).

Yahoo Search Marketing has started up a blog — which is starting out pretty impersonal and corporate - but it is a good step forward. Hopefully they can do as well as the Inside AdWords Blog.

It is my intention to keep you all updated on how the transition goes. Hopefully it will be painless, but if there is pain we will try to help you avoid it.

Happy November!