One of our affiliates was checking out the Google results last week and was surprised to see that Google was obviously in the process of testing out some new versions of the results page.

Here’s a screen grab, you can click it for a bigger view:

As you can see there are a number of things going on this Google results page, including:

• AdWords ads showing up with a bright yellow background on the top and the right
• A video results section is showing up under the AdSense ads on the right sidebar
• A news results section is showing up under the video results on the right sidebar
• A big “searches related to” section running at the bottom of the page

The affiliate also reported that he saw other iterations of these results showing up, including one where the video results section was running on top of the AdWords sidebar on the right side of the page.

Very interesting stuff. But why would Google do this?

I’m thinking that Google might be trying to figure out a way to add non-paid videos to the right sidebar to gather data about how people interact with them, so they can figure out the best way to add revenue generating video AdWords units to the search results page eventually.

I do find it interesting that this testing is happening for the term “auto insurance” – something that I would think would have less than average video watching appeal to searchers, and something that’s best ranking video is a guy making a funny phone call to an insurance company. I have an easier time imagining both paid and unpaid videos doing very well for consumer products terms, especially for terms like “TV reviews,” “compare digital cameras,” “compare SUVs,” etc. I know that when I’m looking at electronics or cars I watch a lot of video reviews and comparisons online.

Anyway, keep an eye out for other test that are going on…if you see anything, send me a screenshot and I’ll add it to this post.

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was having lunch with one of our PPC affiliates this week and the topic of privacy policy came up. Specifically, the affiliate said that even if he’s running traffic through AdWords to a thin site “one page site”, the site will still have more than one page – and one of the main reasons is because the site will have a privacy policy page.

Coincidentally, Search Engine Land’s Bill Slawski posted an article that talks about the importance of a privacy policy when you are doing search engine marketing. Like any of Bill’s articles, this one is well thought out and researched and points to three reasons you’d want to make sure you include a privacy policy on your site (so make sure you read the full article here). They are:

1. Privacy policies give your site credibility and reassures your users
2. Whether your site has a privacy policy or not has an influence on your PPC Quality Score with Google
3. Some people think that having a machine readable privacy policy will affect everything for search rankings to the filtration of sites by toolbars and other tools

All this privacy policy talk made me realize that a lot of new affiliate marketers probably don’t even think to add a privacy policy to their affiliate site – which could be hurting their chances of success. If you fall into that boat, you should make it a goal to get a privacy policy added to your site(s) by the beginning of next week.

Oh yeah, one other thing, don’t just go and steal someone’s privacy policy off their site…that’s bad form. Instead use one of the helpful online tools out there like this privacy policy generator.

Posted by James Omdahl at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ok, the title of this post may be a bit dramatic, but the truth of the matter is that video on the internet is growing rapidly, and the affiliate marketers who are able to master video creation and advertising strategies will be much more prepared for the future of online advertising.

Just yesterday Hitwise came out with data that shows that UK internet traffic to online video websites increased by 172% between this February and February 2007. That’s 172%! The report goes on to say that in the UK one in every 45 visits was to an online video website. (You can get more details here).

As more and more people are watching video online, and as viewership and usage increases, so do the opportunities to advertise through and with video websites. As an affiliate marketer, you still have the opportunity to be a first-mover getting into the online video advertising world.

Admittedly, at this point video advertising seems to be more of a branding move for more traditional advertisers, versus a direct response channel (see this article for proof). But as Google continues to struggle to monetize sites like YouTube, I think they will do whatever they can to make advertising more viable for all types of marketers, including performance marketers.

Outside of YouTube, Google is still trying to figure out how to make video AdSense ads work for both their advertisers and publishers. As video becomes a more accepted form of media on the web, more people will be willing to click on these video ads, and more publishers will be willing to run them on their sites.

If I were you, I’d take some time and start learning more about the online video advertising world. I think that the affiliates who get it will be the ones most likely to profit from it as this market develops.

And believe me, this market will develop.

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

Got slammed with stuff this afternoon, so this post will be short.

One of our folks over here at InsureMe forwarded me the banner ad below, and I have to admit when I looked at it, I gasped and then started laughing uncontrollably. I mean, the banner sure gets your attention, but is it effective? We may never know, but feel free to weigh in on it in the comments section.

And now for the banner ad...

Crazy, huh?

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

It’s been a while since I have checked out the SEOmoz blog, but since there has been a serious lack of interesting information being published on other sites (*cough*-Search Engine Land-*cough*), I decided to check in and see what Rand and friends were up to.

Now aside from having some of the most photogenic people in the search business working for them (I mean look at those profile photos – it’s like a geek modeling agency over there), SEOmoz tends to do a nice job of putting out actionable SEO advice, although mostly just for paying subscribers. Today though, I was excited to see some advice on the free site that discussed some recent test results from the Mozers.

In the post, Rand describes the findings of an experiment with the effectiveness of multiple links to the same URL coming from the same webpage. What they found was a bit of a surprise to me – when there are multiple links to a single URL on a webpage, Google only counts the first link on the page towards the distribution of both link juice and the anchor text of the link.

In the past I’ve always thought that each link passed link juice to the destination URLs on a webpage, duplicate or not. For example, if there was a webpage with five links on it, with 2 links to webpage A, 1 link to webpage B, 1 link to webpage C and 1 link to webpage D, I assumed that the following was true:

• webpage A would get 40% of the link juice from the page
• webpage B would get 20% of the link juice from the page
• webpage C would get 20% of the link juice from the page
• webpage D would get 20% of the link juice from the page

But based off of SEOmoz’s testing, the real link juice distribution would look like:

• webpage A would get 25% of the link juice from the page
• webpage B would get 25% of the link juice from the page
• webpage C would get 25% of the link juice from the page
• webpage D would get 25% of the link juice from the page

Rand also goes on to theorize that if there are two links to the same URL on a page, and the first of those two links (first in the code, not first in the display) has the rel=”nofollow” attribute on it, both links will be treated as “nofollow” links – even if the second link isn’t “nofollowed.”

Also, if both the links to the same URL could be followed, the first link on the page’s anchor text would be counted towards the topic keywords of the page being linked to, but the anchor text of the second link would not be counted toward the keyword topic.

Of course this was just a test, and the validity of the theory has been questioned a bit – but if you are actively sculpting the link juice on your site it may be a good idea to take a peek at the work you’ve been doing to make sure you aren’t invalidating any of your links because of duplication, anchor text placement, or nofollows on duplicate links.

Read the full post at SEOmoz for more, and make sure to scan through the comments for more discussion on the topic.

Posted by James Omdahl at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Back on the third of this month Yahoo! put out one of its “weather updates” – announcing indexing, crawling and algorithm changes that were pending. After the announcement, there were very few visible changes to the search results, but starting last week, the changes starting taking hold.

After doing my Monday morning scan of our rankings, I definitely noticed some changes. Specifically, some of the sites that have historically given Yahoo! some issues, Xanga being the best example, are ranking well again…something that took Yahoo! a while to fix after the last update.

Also, there seems to be more sites getting multiple pages ranked well, versus the past when most sites just had their homepage ranking well for key terms. This is a mixed blessing I’d say – since it gives site owners a better chance to have your inner pages indexed, but also seems to be filling up the top rankings with multiple pages from some highly influential websites.

Also, the number of inbound links, at least for our site, has decreased quite a bit. I’m not sure if this will just be temporary, which is usually the case, or if Yahoo! is being more aggressive when filtering out or reporting links.

Either way, if you’ve been doing SEO for your sites, and you haven’t checked your Yahoo! rankings lately, today may be a good day to do so.

Oh yeah, and if you want to see something kind of funny/sad, look in the post comments and see how much spam the post has gotten that hasn't been cleaned up. Kinda makes you wonder if Yahoo! is collecting those site URLs and blacklisting them or something.

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of our tech guys pointed out this article from The Register that talks about a new technology Google is looking to push out called “automatic matching.” In essence of the article is that automatic matching will deliver your AdWords ads to terms that you haven’t bid on, but Google deems relevant, in an attempt to use up your daily click budget.

The example in the article would be that the shoe company Adidas might start having their ads show up on terms like slippers, not because they bid on them, but because they are similar to words like shoes and sandals.

It sounds like the rollout of automatic matching will be in beta, and available to bigger advertisers only at first. But if this goes AdWords-wide, I think it might be a major concern for affiliates…especially for people who have set their daily budgets artificially high to ensure their ads are served 100% of the time.

I can see the reason why Google would do this (money) but I’m hoping they are extra careful when it comes to serving the ads, and that they provide accurate tools to show you what terms you’re showing up on.

Read the article and share your thoughts. Do you think this will be a good thing for anyone but Google?

Thanks to James H. for the tip.

Posted by James Omdahl at 04:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Let’s face it; no matter what you do for a living, getting burnt out on your work is inevitable. People need variety in their lives, and when you are super focused and pounding away at something day after day, you’re going to get sick of it.

Managing burnout is essential to keeping a consistent, healthy affiliate business, so knowing tactics to help things stay fresh and exciting is key.

Christine Churchill put out an article today that gives you ten strategies for avoiding search marketing burnout. Among them are tips for taking care of yourself physically, mentally, and learning to manage your workload. If you’re feeling a little bit of the burnout coming on, make sure you check out the article.

Also, I’ll throw in a little tip of my own.

If you’re looking for something that can give you a little exercise and get your creative juices flowing, consider picking up a Nintendo Wii. We’ve had one in the office this week and it’s proving to be a great way to increase morale, give you a little exercise, and relax a bit before you go back to the grind.

Yes, I’m obsessed with the Wii.

How do you avoid burnout? Leave your own tips in the comments.

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Seth Godin recently posted the video below, check it out first, then read on…

While the reason this video was made has nothing to online marketing, it really is a good example of why it is important to know what people pay attention to, what they don’t, and how important focus is to the success of your message.

What I like about the video is it really shows that, when you attention is on one thing, there is a pretty low chance that you’ll notice things that have nothing to do with what you are focused on. This is why I am often skeptical of anyone who tries to sell me on cost-per-impression (or CPM) advertisements.

The way I see it, no matter how advanced CPM serving and targeting technology has become; it still does not address the fact that a consumer who is exposed to a CPM ad is almost always in the process of doing something that isn’t directly related to the action you want them to take. For example, even if your ad appears on an article about the auto insurance industry, the chances are still pretty low that that person is actively looking for an insurance quote at that exact moment.

To put it in the context of the video, the site visitor is counting the passes (the content they are looking at), and not looking for the moonwalking bear (your ad).

Actually, has LowerMyBills done a moonwalking bear banner ad yet? Or was that just a dancing alien? Hmmmmm.

I digress.

I guess my point is this. As an affiliate, when you are looking at the different advertising opportunities that are out there, you should aim to place your ads somewhere that they are the focus of the consumer’s attention. If you find yourself putting ads in places where your message is off topic or too far from your audiences attention, you’re chances of making money are going to be greatly reduced.

So next time you’re deciding whether or not to run an ad, ask yourself if you’re going to be part of the action or just a moonwalking bear.

Posted by James Omdahl at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Unless you are one of the lucky affiliate marketers who have come from a web design background, chances are you’ll have to find someone to build a website for you at one point or another. Hopefully, you know someone who can help you out…or at least know someone who knows someone. But if you don’t have any contacts, you’ll be forced to find a designer on your own…a daunting task.

While the type of design you personally like a matter of taste, there are some signs that the web designer you are considering for your next job is not the right choice. These signs are outlined by David Walsh from DZone’s post, 9 Signs You Shouldn’t Hire THAT Web Guy.

My three favorite things to avoid from the list are:

1. He’s a FrontPage expert
2. He’ll submit your website to [inflated number here] search engines
3. He can make you a great splash page Flash animation

There three points resonated with me since I see many affiliate sites that are built on FrontPage (often looking amateurish and are not SEO friendly), are excited that their site will be submitted to search engines (a service that doesn’t really do anything) and have a killer Flash intro on them (a classic conversion killer).

Personally, if I was hiring a web designer, I would first make sure that they have a strong portfolio of sites they have built that are for a similar purpose as yours (lead generation, ecommerce, etc.). Next, I would compare their designs to the designs of the top companies in your industry…does their work look up to snuff? Finally, I’d ask for referrals, a lot of them. If they are any good, they’ll be able to provide them to you with no problem. If they say they can’t give you any, look elsewhere.

There are a number of talented freelance designers out there, so don’t settle. Your affiliate websites are an investment – they are going to cost you some money to build - so do your homework on the front end and make sure you get what you paid for. A well designed affiliate site can pay for itself with increased conversion alone, and a poorly designed site can be an insurmountable obstacle to your affiliate success.

Make sure you read the other six tips in David’s post. And if you have any designer tips of your own, or want to share good resources for finding freelance designers, leave a comment!

Posted by James Omdahl at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last week Yahoo! announced that they would be opening up their search platform in something they were calling the Yahoo! Search Open Ecosystem. I held off on writing anything about this initiative because, well, I really didn’t get it. But after reading some stuff online, I am still totally confused.

My basic understanding is that Yahoo! will allow webmasters to add certain tags (or microformats) to their sites that will help Yahoo! better understand the pages and the relationship between the different pages. Then Yahoo! will use this data to create better web results, since they won’t have to try to figure out the relationships between sites/pages/etc. through linking patterns and content exclusively.

The example given in the Yahoo! announcement has to do with LinkedIn, and says that by marking up its pages with these microformats, Yahoo! could better “understand the semantic content and relationships of the many components of the site.”

So that’s what I understand, but here are the things that are confusing me:

• Are these “microformats” any different from much abused meta tags of days past? Won’t giving webmasters control over these factors just encourage them to take advantage of the system to increase their search rankings?
• How technical must one be to put these microformats into place? Does this mean reworking an entire site to comply with the microformat standards? If so, could the changes being made hurt rankings in Google?
• Is this really a big deal at this point, or is it just a small step towards something that will be bigger later on?

If you can answer these questions, you’d be my hero. I really want to understand this stuff, but things seem to get way technical and over my head when I do any digging.

Thanks!

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

If you’re anything like me, you have a hard time spending your hard earned cash on bigger ticket items, especially if they’re for business, not fun.

Take computer monitors for example. Currently at home I work on my MacBook with a 13.3” screen. I have a stand for it, and a keyboard and mouse, but I am still working on a tiny screen. To me, this isn’t such a problem and I really don’t notice it, but after reading this article from the Wall Street Journal, I think I’m going to start noticing.

The article cites a University of Utah study that found that having a larger monitor can help you substantially increase your productivity. Based off the study people were tested doing tasks on a 18-inch screen, a 24-inch screen, and two 20-inch screens. The results were pretty amazing.

When people used the two 20-inch screens they were 44% quicker at the tasks assigned to them than with the 18-inch screens. Even more amazingly, the people who used the 24-inch screen were 52% faster at completing tasks.

Interestingly, the researches found that the productivity increases dropped off when a 26-inch screen was used.

Of course, everyone’s experience will differ – and different people will work well with different sized monitors. But if you are like me, working on a small laptop screen at home, it might be time to consider picking up a something larger. I mean, just imagine what a 52% increase in productivity could mean to you and your commissions.

Here are a couple more posts about why and how buying expensive equipment can be more cost effective for you and your company in the long run:

If You Want to Be a Super Affiliate…Act Like One
How to Save Money Running a Startup

Posted by James Omdahl at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hot Dog!

Today is flying by and between my daily tasks, crunching numbers in excel and having a conference call, I’m running short on time. So I want to point you over to the UberAffiliate blog to a post called Random Mistakes in Affiliate Marketing.

The post covers some of the basic mistakes affiliates make, and explains why these mistakes need to be avoided. Quality stuff.

Enjoy, and hopefully tomorrow I’ll have the time to wax poetically about some affiliate related topic…fingers crossed.

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Most of what I write about here targets new and up-and-coming affiliates, and for good reason. A lot of experienced affiliates already know what they know, and really don’t need someone else telling them how to succeed with affiliate marketing. But according to a recent post on Revenews by Jeremy Palmer, this confidence in your success could ultimately handicap your ability to be more successful in the future.

Jeremy points out a recent article in Time Magazine that explained that experience can ultimately lead to negligence and apathy towards new ideas and improvements. He then goes on to list a number of helpful examples of assumption and mistakes that experienced affiliate marketers are likely to make (including some interesting PPC tips).

Check out the post for yourself to get the tips and learn more about how being an experience affiliate can cause reduced results.

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

I’ve written in the past about my general distain for the one-stop shop affiliate site.

You know what I’m talking about – the “online mall,” the “Internet superstore,” and (my favorite) the “Internet shopping portal.” I’m sorry, but unless you have a way of fulfilling every product related need for everyone in a way that is better than Amazon.com, your market is already gone.

I’m reminded of my one-stop shop phobia by Seth Godin’s recent post “The Long Slide to Gone.”

In the post, Seth shows a picture of a store he saw recently with a big sign on the front awning that says:

HOBBY SHOP

TRAINS – R / C – MODELS

COFFEE - LOTTERY

Seth points out that the store started as a hobby shop, but as business was not meeting expectations, they started adding more, unrelated products. Gradually, the shop started selling things that have nothing to do with what was their core business. In the end, the store has ended up being a so-so hobby shop, a so-so coffee shop, a so-so convenience store and absolutely great at absolutely nothing.

That’s a problem.

I think some affiliates can be guilty of a similar scattershot approach when things aren’t going as well as they planned. They may start out with focus on one niche or vertical, but as their website commissions wane, they decide that instead of starting something new they’ll add more products to their existing offers, in a hope to gain a wider audience.

The final result is often a decent site becoming bloated, overcrowded, and focusless.

Before you add a new offer to your site to boost revenue, ask yourself if you are adding something that really does compliment the current focus of your site or if you’re just trying to sell lottery tickets out of a hobby shop.

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s true – I’ve become one of those people who use Twitter. Me, someone who called Twitter “annoying” in the past.

But here is the deal - there is a lot happening on Twitter that can help affiliate marketers learn, connect, and stay in touch with one another. Even though I would have told you to steer clear in the past, it’s now pretty evident that there is enough value in following and contributing on Twitter that I think you should open an account and get involved.

For those who haven’t heard about Twitter before, the best way I have been able to explain it is this…

Twitter gives people in different physical locations the ability to quickly communicate their location, status and points of interest to their friends and contacts in what can best be described as a virtual workplace/cafe. This virtual workplace may be the reason why so many web/independent workers find Twitter so useful - it lets them broadcast simple ideas and concepts with the people they care about without going through the formality of a blog post, email or even instant message.

In reality, Twitter sits somewhere between a blog post (because it is broadcasted publicly), an instant message (since you can direct messages to other Twitter users) and an email (since there is private messaging available). While this in itself might not sound so exciting, it’s the users who make it all work. Thought leaders in the marketing, SEM, affiliate and blogging worlds are all available, active and accessible on Twitter.

So get signed up here, and then go to the following pages below and become a “follower” (hit the “Follow” button under the profile picture) of these affiliate/online marketing superstars:

Sam Harrelson
Missy Ward
Shawn Collins
Scott Jangro
Jim Kukral
Mark Wielgus
John Hasson
Danny Sullivan
Barry Schwartz
Michael Gray
Shoemoney
Nick Wilsdon
Greg Boser

Oh yeah, and don’t forget to make me your Twitter buddy – you can find me here.

It might take a little while to get into the groove and figure out how to best utilize and learn from what’s going on at Twitter, but hopefully you’ll find it as enjoyable and interesting as I do.

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

There’s a bit of an uproar going on over at Search Engine Land about an article written by Shari Thurow’s called “You’d Be Wise To “NoFollow” This Dubious SEO Advice.”

In the column, Shari suggests that SEO not use what a lot of SEOs call “link siloing” or “pagerank sculpting” because is being used to improve rankings and not to improve user experience.

For those who don’t know, link siloing is basically the act of using the “nofollow” tag on links to unimportant pages on your site (unimportant from a search standpoint - like privacy policy, T&C, etc.) so that other links without the “nofollow” attribute get more link juice from the linking page.

Shari seems convinced that the overuse of “nofollow” will eventually be considered a bad thing by Google, even though Google’s Matt Cutts has said publicly:

Yes, webmasters can feel free to use nofollow internally to help tell Googlebot which pages they want to receive link juice from other pages

Now I won’t deny that Google can change their mind about this kind of thing, but the way I look at it, using “nofollow” internally is the same thing as giving different levels of importance to different pages on your site when you use Google Sitemaps. Google wants us to point out our best and most important pages; it helps them find the best content. I figure if Google can’t decide what pages are most important from external links alone, they are more than happy to have help a bit of help figuring out the importance through internal links.

I’ve been using link sculpting in my SEO efforts and guess what? It works. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. Just check out the comments section on Sphinn about this post and you’ll see evidence that sculpting is working for other people too. To me, controlling the flow of your internal link juice is an SEO best practice, not some sort of trick to fool people.

I know Shari is all about sparkling white hat SEO, but I don’t see why link sculpting isn’t included in her definition. Maybe it just seems too easy or something.

Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see if she responds to any of the critiques of her article. So far, she’s been silent.

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Right now, maybe nothing…but very soon, maybe a lot.

Barry Schwartz of SEL and SER ran across some chatter that Google AdWords is going to start using page load time as a factor for a landing page’s quality score.

The speculation started on the WebmasterWorld forums, but has spread to other outlets as people found this section of the About AdWords page:

Beginning in February 2008, you'll be able to see a grade for your website's load time in your AdWords account. 'Load time' refers to the amount of time it takes for a user to arrive at your functional landing page after clicking your ad.

Several weeks after your load time grade becomes visible, it will begin to impact your landing page quality and, therefore, your Quality Score. We recommend working to improve your load time during this interim if it's received a low score.

Now I know that watching costs is something that all affiliates try to do, but this change solidifies that affiliates should make sure their sites are hosted with a reliable, speedy hosting company. (Of course, you should be doing this for conversion and user experience reasons anyway).

I know that in my daily perusal of sites I run across a good number of affiliate sites that take way too long to load, especially if they are sites that are being hosted on a third party’s domain. So if that describes you, it might be time to start looking for a new host.

Luckily, there are a number of decent hosts out there that can get you quick load times without busting your budget. Personally I like Site5 and our developers tend to favor Westhost…but if I were you I’d shop around and find someplace that works for other affiliates.

If you have a personal hosting favorite, let us know in the comments…but don’t leave an affiliate link, ok? :)

Posted by James Omdahl at 01:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here’s a video from 45n5.com’s Mark Wielgus that explains his 2010 rule for SEO. The premise is that you should only try to do SEO in niches where you can build a webpage that is 20% better than the top 10 results for a particular keyword. Here’s the video:

What I really like about the 2010 SEO rule is that it challenges affiliates to actually create a site that adds more value to a particular niche than anyone else is currently. This in itself is really what I think defines a good affiliate site…a site that is not just able to rank well, but is able to rank well over time, even under the scrutiny of a manual review by a search engine’s search quality team, because the site adds value.

Sure, 20% better is a bit vague – but I think the number is more symbolic than anything. The real point is that you should do whatever you can to create the best website for the niche you operate in.

Take a look at your site and compare it to the top ten sites for the keyword you’d like to rank for. Is your site better? If not, what could you do to make your site better? Is there information you can add? Can you make your site more user friendly? More entertaining? Can you offer more options than the top 10?

Figure out everything that can be improved upon and strategically incorporate those things into your site. That’s your “20% better.”

By challenging yourself to create the best site in your niche, you’ll give people more of a reason to seek out your site, link to your site, and tell their friends about your site. And that folks, is a powerful path to SEO success.

Posted by James Omdahl at 04:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

PPC guru and affiliate marketer John Hasson has updated his list of PPC companies that work. If you're looking for some new places to spend your PPC dollars, you might want to explore some of the companies on his list.

With that said, I'd remind you that John does work in multiple verticals, and the smaller engines he lists could work for some verticals and not others...I know our company's experience differs from John's.

Also, never forget Vinny Lingham's principal of Return On Effort (ROE) - make sure you are spending your time in the places where you can get the biggest return...and in the PPC world, that often means the bigger search engines.

Thanks for updating the list John - keep up the great work!

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Check out this post on Search Engine Journal and then come back and let me know if you think the ad was PPC genius or short sighted marketing at best.

I tend to fall into the shortsighted camp...but who knows, it could have converted enough to be worth it (and I bet those clicks were CHEAP!).

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)