• Creative SEM Strategies Deserve Recognition
    Kevin Lee wants SEM to get a little creative recognition. After all, the Effie Awards, Clio Awards, ADDY Awards and Cannes Lions all pay tribute to creativity, but none recognize the long hours spent thinking through campaigns to develop sound strategies for PPC search, creative keywords, landing pages, and integration. While no one's handing you a flashy award or physically patting you on the back, don't forget you develop great content for the tons of readers who continually visit your site for information. Lee provides tips and tricks on several creative options. "There are lots of ways that …
  • Marketing On Facebook
    Facebook engineers Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, creator of News Feed, and David Fetterman, lead engineer for the Facebook Development Platform, sat down with Danny Dover to talk about everything from search and news feeds, to the advertising platform. One of the more interesting points from the interview details a search function that supports "a lesser known feature." It has the ability to "drive traffic outside of the site," Dover writes. "When a user types in a query that doesn't match anything in their social graph the search bar provides the ability to search Microsoft's Live search index." …
  • SMEs Adopt SEM
    Small to medium-size enterprises, or SMEs, should embrace SEM. Jane Simms serves up several examples of small businesses that have embraced search engine marketing. For instance, Foneshop, a UK online retailer of mobile phones and accessories, initially "struggled, scraping in only about 10 orders a day - but in 2005 it embarked on a search marketing strategy through Google AdWords," she writes. "Within a year, its orders had soared by 56%, the average value of each order had risen by 54% and its conversion costs had fallen by 29%." Simms steps through some techniques, from geo-targeting, to developing keywords, …
  • Improving Quality Scores And Search Results
    Google will soon introduce two changes designed to improve how the search engine calculates quality scores and ranks ads. While the first change aims to better evaluate the precise quality of the ad, regardless of its position on the page, the second improves how ads are positioned above search results. Since ads in high positions typically earn better click-through rates, calculating the most accurate quality scores becomes critical. To improve quality scores, Google plans to update the portion of the quality score algorithm that accounts for ad position. This should ensure that ads compete fairly for position based …
  • Free SEO For 30-Day Trial
    RankSense will let you subscribe to its SEO software for a 90-day free trial. However, the company bills after 30 days, so you might want to set a reminder if you don't think the package fits your needs. Daniel Scocco walks you through the 12 integrated tools in the package, all focused on optimizing most aspects of your blog or Web site. He also provides a little background on Hamlet Batista, the creator of the software. Features found in the software include advanced keyword research tools, analysis, a Web site SEO check, and more. "The interesting thing about …
  • Trick Or Treat SEM Style
    "Dressing up your site is like dressing up yourself for Halloween," writes Erik Dafforn, comparing SEM to trick or treaters. "It's easy for people (and algorithms) to quickly spot how much of your appearance is based on genuine effort and how much is simply glitter." So Dafforn serves up some SEM knowledge with a Halloween spin, comparing teenagers who don't really dress up but expect treats anyway to "clients who expect significant results but who are unwilling to take even the most elementary steps toward earning that candy." As a kid, receiving "that little bag of self …
  • 7 SEO Mistakes Abroad
    Tad Chef shares 7 of the "weirdest" SEO mistakes that big companies make when taking their business overseas. The mistakes, according to Chef, include the need to accomplish certain tasks but being unwilling to adapt to market conditions; working with a "ridiculously limited budget" and technical limitations that can prevent even the simplest SEO tasks; and insisting that SEO specialists use outdated practices. Chef said the biggest mistake companies make is not conducting market research beforehand. "This is really so counterproductive," he said. "Foreign investors enter Germany and want to clone their business model without any significant research of …
  • SEO For Video Search
    Roger Janik reminds us that when searching for video we are not searching for specific images, but rather descriptions of SEO tags. "For instance, if a person uploads a video of a baby laughing, he or she might call the video 'Baby Laughing,'" he said. "A person searching for a video of a baby laughing would have to type in the keywords: baby + laughing or something very close to have a good chance of finding that video online." While this method may help you find the videos you seek, we can dramatically improve the searching for content, …
  • Ranking On Product Placement
    Here is a lighthearted look at SEO in Ranked Hard, a comic blog created by members of the SEO company Big Oak.. In a previous strip the subject was link-buying strategies in SEO; "the next logical step ...is product placement," as Ranked Hard's writer Simon points out in a post under the strip The comic humorously overdoes the idea of product placement with scenes of ads on hats, t-shirts, mouse pads and coffee cups .The strip also introduces the fact that the company's site, which has been running for nine months without ads, will now be sponsored by various …
  • Keyword Targeting
    Part 9 of this 12-part series on keyword research provides guidelines to help gather, sort and organize your keywords into an effective marketing campaign. As a search engine optimization guru, your job is to make sure searchers find precisely what they are looking for on your site. This means use keywords that reflect the content. If you don't, searchers will quickly leave in favor of a more relevant site. Stoney deGeyter knows it's often tempting to try and optimize for keyword phrases that are not necessarily represented on the site that you feel will bring traffic from words …
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