PPC-Advice.com

At first, I thought it was curious that my paid search campaigns would show relatively consistent patterns on a monthly and yearly basis.  Trends that I blogged about before some 2 years ago, still hold true today while others have become even more obvious.  Needless to say, knowing about these trends gives you a significant leg up on the competition, and verifying which patterns exist for your industry is as easy as tuning your campaign reporting to historical dates in the past. Read more…

Every now and then I like to run a check-up on my contextual match content network campaigns, to make sure Google is doing it’s job in keeping Adsense partners in check.  I’m happy to report that recent screening and higher scrutiny has gone a long way to clean up the Google Adwords Content Network.  The whole point of contextual match campaigns is to find areas advertisers can generate impressions, and hopefully cheap clicks. Read more…

Given the recent economic downturn and attendance numbers in a downward spiral over the past year or so, turnout for SES San Jose, the granddaddy of all online marketing shows, was surprisingly optimistic.  Not only are all major search engines, agencies, and tool providers on hand for the festivities, experts from all walks of marketing disciplines are presenting on their specialties.  It’s the perfect storm, in the perfect weather, at the perfect time for optimizing online marketing. Read more…

On the week leading up to Search Engine Strategies Toronto comes news from Hitwise of their entry into the Canadian market.  Obviously, they must have struck a deal with one or two of only three major ISPs in the country, finally giving Canadian business the opportunity to keep an eye on competitor movements.  With comScore amping up their web beaconing effort to normalize their panel-based results, Hitwise seems primed to become a quick favorite, if they can take hold of decent market share.

It’ll be interesting to see whether their announcement includes the full bevvy of reports available to US marketers, such as search marketing traffic, both natural and paid, and other juicy segmenting features.  I’ll cover more news as it becomes available.  Needless to say, Hitwise has already reached out to larger online web producers well in advance of this announcement.

Whoa, didn’t see this one coming.  In a surprising move yesterday, Google announced that advertisers would be allowed to use trademarked terms in their search ads, making for quite the conversation piece admidst legal uncertainty surrounding rights-holders.  The older rule allowed advertisers to request Google remove trademark and brand names from ad text, thereby providing some protection for owners.  Is this good or bad?  Depends which side of the fence you’re sitting on. Read more…

In marketing, vendor and partner transparency is king; more transparency equals better client relations.  In the online marketing world, there’s the tendency for vendor relations to languish or stagnate by maintaining the status quo. After watching Google as an advertising vendor for many years, they simply aren’t that kind of company.  With the web being what it is today, clients and agencies that use Google Adwords are very vocal about improvements they’d like to see made, including the improvement of transparency.  Google’s new Search Based Keyword Tool is one such improvement: more better. Read more…

Continuing my pre-show coverage of Search Engine Strategies Toronto, I have the privilege of introducing Janice Hatch of Google Canada.  Janice is scheduled to speak on Day 2 of the conference in a session called “Campaign Performance Tracking” and was nice enough to spare some time to answer a few questions that relate to Google Adwords and the future of search marketing. Read more…

In response to my coverage of previous Search Engine Strategies events last year, the organizers of the show reached out to ask me if I would interview a few of the speakers this year.  In the first of what I hope will be a three-part series of interviews, I sat down with Julie Batten, SES Toronto speaker and eMarketing Manager at Klick Communications for a little Q&A on a range of topics affecting our industry. Read more…

I received an interesting plea for help recently via e-mail regarding tracking paid versus organic keywords in Omniture SiteCatalyst.  Although many functions are available within vanilla installations of SiteCatalyst, and several settings can be added to implementations after the fact – the little guy is often left holding the stick.  It’s easier for Omniture to say, just buy Search Center, because well, 9 times out of 10, they make money that way.  For simple keyword tracking without incurring any residual fees, get ready to roll-up your sleeves. Read more…

Picking a winner can be hard.

No doubt, an internet marketer’s toughest job is finding the right mix of advertising cost, overall brand value for ad placements, and conveying value proposition to drive conversion.  We can collect all kinds of valuable information through web analytics including visitor pathways, conversion funnels, top content driving revenue, and even cool stuff like demographics and socio-economic indicators.  But finding sites that can supply us with our most valuable prospects can be tough.  Enter Behavioral Targeting from Google Adwords. Read more…