No need to go crazy now with trying to figure out what you are going to do if/when Google and Yahoo combine their paid search ads, personally I don’t see the government allowing it (but that’s just my opinion)…monopoly anyone??
Anyways, from the reports yesterday, nothing is supposed to go into effect until September so we all have time to figure things out.
If you’d like to read more on it, Yahoo news has given some insight into it, as well as Search Engine Land.
Does that mean you CAN bid on trademark terms?
Ethics are icky and sticky when it comes to online marketing and advertising. We still haven’t reached the true outline of what that means, or when there is a serious violation of privacy whether it be personal or business information and names. Seriously, folks, here we are in another long drawn out election year, where we, as our American duty, have to pick out who the truth teller is. I can hear some politicians state the following quote from Darby Conley:
“Ethics are so annoying. I avoid them on principle.”
Where do we, as internet marketers stand with the so called “ethics”? Sometimes, because we stand on the cutting edge of marketing and advertising, some ideas that seem good could turn out to be “unethical”. There are loose definitions, such as Google’s take on trademark terms.
And if you want to read s’more stuff about trademark bidding, here are Yahoo’s stipulations.
The AMA has a code of their own set ethics.
You are so MONEY, you don't even know it.
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Most affiliates don't have a lot of cash to spare when they're just starting out. (After all, that's why they become affiliates, right?) Whether paid search is their game of choice or they prefer experimenting with SEO, tips that help them enter the arena without spending an arm and a leg are always welcome.
Well, if you're a new affiliate--or even a seasoned pro looking to cut costs--here's a suggestion you might not have thought of: try using colloquialisms. That's right, if you can find and use more informal terms (or those same terms in another language) and substitute them for terms more difficult to rank on or more expensive to bid on, you might just find yourself a profitable niche!
If you're wondering what I'm talking about, or you think I'm speaking another language, check out this recent post over at the SEOmoz blog on the subject. It'll explain things in more detail--and put a new twist on the long tail!
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Let's chat a little about social networks. They are SO web 2.0! But is it worth the time and effort? Is it really connecting people or just increasing more niche marketing while allowing people to have more degrees of separation? It seems like I have more desire to IM or email or something like that now instead of putting the effort into contacting my friends via phone or in person!
I have a Facebook account and a LinkedIN account, but don't dare touch MySpace because it scares me. I'm not a professional social networker, but I have used it and will continue to use it. I run into old colleagues, very old friends and acquaintances and have worked business deals after connecting on either of the two, so it has had positive benefits. However, it also is time consuming and if I spend time on social online networking, then I'm kinda burnt out on anything else.
Here's a good article kind of talking about the emergence of social networking and it's snowball effect:
]]> Now, since I am an avid nonuser of MySpace, if I end up clicking on a link that takes me there, I automatically assume it's bad/spam advertising and will go no further.Facebook? These Harvard guys had something. I've connected with people all over the world here. There is very targeted marketing to me specifically. To the point that I've actually joined a few groups because of that targeted advertising. I'm not going to suggest you try it, but let's just say a suspicious 30something year old is open to that kind of niche marketing. Top Ten Reviews had something to say about ranking social networks.
Click here for some stats on advertising dollars spent on social networks:
Now: get back to socializing, folks! There’s gold in them thar so called networks!
You can! Whether you enjoy writing on the side or you can barely construct an understandable sentence, knowing what NOT to do when writing landing pages is just as important as knowing what TO do. The premise? If you can avoid making mistakes up front, you'll save yourself a lot of time and frustration on the back end--no matter what your level of experience.
To find out what makes landing pages go wrong, check out this handy-dandy article I ran across. If you'll take its pointers seriously and avoid common missteps, even you can write landing pages that rock!
So flip the switch, shed some light on the subject--and start writing great landing pages now. You really can do it!
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So as you’ve already read James (the traitor—just kidding we still love you James!) decided to leave last Friday and we’ve decided to keep the blog up and running. 
As some of you may already know (if you follow me on Twitter), Friday is my last day here at InsureMe. I’ve had an amazing, life changing, and exciting 5 years with InsureMe and deciding to leave wasn’t an easy choice. I’ve been given a new opportunity with a start-up in Europe, and at this point in my life it feels like time to take a chance and step out of my comfort zone.
Actually, one of my favorite quotes, which I’ve mentioned on this blog before, seems to apply well in this situation:
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain
One of my greatest joys over the last two and a half years has been writing this blog for all of you. It truly was a labor of love, and all of the feedback, comments, and relationships that have grown from the blog have made the process of writing almost 700 post worthwhile.
Hopefully over the years you’ve read at least one thing here that has helped you be more successful as an affiliate marketer…if that’s the case, I consider this blog a success.
The good news is that InsureMe plans to continue posting to this blog going forward. While post might not be as frequent as they currently are, InsureMe has a team of talented online marketers here that will continue to add tips, tools and news to the blog to help you succeed in your affiliate adventure. So make sure you subscribe via RSS and keep an eye out for future posts.
If you’d like to stay in touch, or follow me on my next adventure, track down my personal blog and website, which is easily found by searching for “James Omdahl” on Google. You can find my contact info there if you want it.
Thanks so much for reading and stay tuned…more InsureMe Affiliate Blog goodness is on the way…
]]>At the top of the search results, Yahoo! shows this message:
And then in the results they show this:
And when you hover over that, Yahoo! pops up this:
You can see the whole screenshot here.
Looks like Yahoo! might be trying to differentiate themselves as the company that protects users from spammers. The real question is, if a company is so bad that they flag them, why show them in the results at all?
]]>Today I ran across Adam Audette’s SEO Guide to Information Architecture and was blown away by all of the great information and practical advice all wrapped up into a single document.
The guide includes the following sections:
As someone who has underestimated the importance of information architecture and on-page optimization for SEO in the past, I can attest that modifications to code, design, and internal linking can truly boost your site’s SEO performance in meaningful ways. So take some time today and read Adam’s guide…you can thank me later.
]]>Today I ran across Adam Audette’s SEO Guide to Information Architecture and was blown away by all of the great information and practical advice all wrapped up into a single document.
The guide includes the following sections:
As someone who has underestimated the importance of information architecture and on-page optimization for SEO in the past, I can attest that modifications to code, design, and internal linking can truly boost your site’s SEO performance in meaningful ways. So take some time today and read Adam’s guide…you can thank me later.
]]>If you hire someone to do web development for you, you may want to pass this list on to them. Making sure your site is built properly can make a night and day difference in your search engine rankings, so do what you can to make sure things are built right in the first place.
Here’s a link to the PDF, and here is a link to the SEOmoz post about the sheet.
]]>For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Change History Tool, it is a feature in AdWords that allows you to look back on the account changes you’ve made in since 2006. In doing so, the tool helps you remember what changes you made that could have caused a change in your accounts performance.
To access the tool, just login to your AdWords account and click on ‘Tools” under the “Campaign Management” tab. Once you have done this, click on “My Change History” and enter a date range.
The way I see it, this is an invaluable tool these days, especially for people who are managing large AdWords accounts that require constant tweaking to try to increase ad ranking and decrease cost-per-click. By utilizing something like the Change History Tool, a PPCer will be able to better interpret the effects of account changes on their quality score/ranking/etc.
Also exciting (and the way I learned about this tool), PPC Hero announced that Google will be adding some graphing features that will give advertisers a more graphical look at how the changes effect their accounts.
If you’ve got an AdWords account or 20, make sure you start taking advantage of the Change History Tool…it could help you answer some of the magical mysteries of AdWords.
]]>Go read What is a #1 Google Ranking Worth over at the SEOBook blog.
]]>How?
Dayparting.
For those of you not familiar, dayparting, or ad scheduling as Google calls it, is the process of setting different bids for your PPC keywords depending on the time of day the search is being conducted.
So for example, if you knew you got your highest conversion rate from 5 PM to 7 PM, but extremely low conversion from 11 PM to 8 AM, you could set your cost-per-click to a higher or lower number to make sure you get the higher converting traffic and you get less of the lower converting traffic.
The funny thing is, I don’t know if there are really a whole lot of people who bother to use dayparting features when they are available. To many people it seems like setting everything up might be a bit too complex and might not be worth the time.
But seriously - if you could increase your conversions by 35%, and your cost-per-conversion by 46%., wouldn’t you?
Check out John’s blog post to see how he determined what times to run various bids, and how he made dayparting boost the effectiveness of his AdWords content campaign.
]]>The data is broken into 3 different variables, which are:
If this is accurate information, it’s terribly interesting to me that these three numbers would show up in the search results. The example shown in the SEJ article is for the term “warwick honda dealer” and shows that out of the two AdWords results, the corporate Honda website is likely bidding much higher than a non-official Honda site. The interesting thing is that the non-official site has a higher Pscore, which could mean it is considered more relevant that the corporate Honda site.
Of course, with anything like this, I’m left with more questions than answers. Namely, are these the only three scores that are used to determine placement? Also, why would something like this end up in the visible search results? Is it something that is normally visible to Google employees only? Finally, what the heck is “thresh”?!
Let me know your thoughts on the leak…and if you figure out what a thresh is.
