Sarah Bird makes the case for including a warranty or disclaimer in your client contracts, arguing that such provisions help protect both search firms and their clients from false claims and exorbitant expectations. "Clients forget and/or misinterpret verbal conversation," Bird says. "If it is written down, your client is more likely to remember that you didn't promise the moon and the stars. Thus, your client will be less upset on the day their rankings drop by five results for no apparent reason." A warranty also limits your liability if you can't snag or sustain high rankings. …

Testing, competitive research and dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) are some of the tools David Rodnitsky counts as essential to the search copywriter's repertoire. With testing, your goal should be trying to find a slightly "generic" ad text that can work across multiple, diverse ad groups. Pit two or three of these ad texts against each other, then suss out the winner and repeat with a new set of challengers. "Wash and repeat until the increase in performance becomes minimal or your ad text winner holds the top position through many ad text wars," he says. "When first …

Testing, competitive research and dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) are some of the tools David Rodnitsky counts as essential to the search copywriter's repertoire. With testing, your goal should be trying to find a slightly "generic" ad text that can work across multiple, diverse ad groups. Pit two or three of these ad texts against each other, then suss out the winner and repeat with a new set of challengers. "Wash and repeat until the increase in performance becomes minimal or your ad text winner holds the top position through many ad text wars," he says. "When first …

Gordon Choi outlines some tactics for running international campaigns with Yahoo Search Marketing. The first step is, of course, to test. "Whether you are starting a keyword list from scratch or migrating the keyword list from your Adwords campaigns, start by launching search-targeted campaigns in the country that can deliver the most traffic to your Web site," he says. "This will allow you to test Yahoo Search Marketing's platform thoroughly and quickly." Once you've tested to see which countries and keywords will work best, bring in a professional copywriter (or appoint someone from your team) to deal with drafting …

Many advertisers choose to keep their ads from running on parked domains when using Google's Content Network, but Dave Davis notes that sometimes these sites can yield a high volume of low-cost conversions. And if you find a parked domain in your niche that's conversion-rich and for sale, it can be an ideal candidate to add to your (or your client's) site roster. Davis suggests digging into your Placement Performance Reports to find this info. "For the purpose of this post, we will only be looking at the domain, URL impressions, clicks, conversions and Value/Cost (Return …

Who says you can't always get what you want? Microsoft wanted more search volume when it rolled out the Live Search Cashback program, and more search volume is what it got, according to the latest data from comScore. The number of Live Search queries shot up by 15% in June, following the launch of Cashback, garnering the software giant just over 9% of search market share overall. The gains erase search volume losses from previous months, and bode well for the future of the Cashback program, which shifts traditional CPC ads to a CPA model. "While the latest …

The latest twist in the Microhoo saga finds Yahoo and investor Carl Icahn kissing and making up--for now. The Web giant has agreed to allow Icahn and two of his other choices seats on the board of directors. And while CEO Jerry Yang stresses "working together" with the "new colleagues on the Board" to help Yahoo take advantage of the "large and growing opportunity" on the horizon, it seems that Icahn still has his sights set on some kind of sale. In his own words: "While I continue to believe that the sale of the …

According to Stoney deGeyter, a "Destination Web site" is one that "truly deserves to be ranked well in the search engines." It's likely that every business owner wants to have a site that ranks well, so this post is the fourth in a series that details how to build and market Destination Web sites. The four factors that go into marketing a Destination Web site are: strong on- and off-page SEO that involves more than just search engine rankings; compelling content that drives conversions; synchronized on- and offline marketing efforts; as well as business management and customer service …