I haven’t been posting much on here lately. I’ve mainly been concentrating on current projects as well as starting up new ones. Posting will probably continue to be light, but feel free to subscribe to the RSS feed to stay current.
on to the post…
I usually use several different resources and methods for creating keywords lists - one of them being Google’s Keyword Tool. It’s definitely one of the better keyword toolsI’ve used since Google has some of the best access to backend search data on keywords (their own) and can use that data to recommend more relevant keywords. However, it still isn’t without it’s flaws.
Today, I’ve noticed that the keywords generated by the tool were much more specific than the I’ve seen in the past. I’m not sure if Google has made “improvements” to the tool or if it was just the base set of keywords I was using, but the results I received were more long tail in nature rather than just generic or unrelated terms. This was mainly a good thing, but the problem was that when I conducted some additional research into the keywords, I noticed that many of the terms that weren’t immediately recognizable to me were actually terms that are more common to countries outside the U.S.
It got me thinking that the keyword tool could be much more powerful if geotargeted settings could be applied to the results and estimates in the same fashion that it’s currently being used on Google Trends. This way, marketers could use the data to develop different keyword lists for specific regional campaigns and also conduct research into these regions.
Related posts
It’s been a while since I’ve used Microsoft AdCenter. I used it when I last had a regular job a little over a year ago now, but at the time, I had reps that would take care of anything I needed. Since then (and also a bit before then), I stayed away from AdCenter unless I specifically needed to. My feelings about it were that it was just too much of a pain to use in relation to the volume it brought in. It’s been about 2 weeks since I’ve started using AdCenter again. Some things have changed - others haven’t.
Setting Up Campaigns
Setting up new campaigns in AdCenter is pretty annoying overall. I’ve gotten used to the ease of using AdWords Editor, Yahoo’s bulk sheets or setting up campaigns manually. Google is still easiest and while Yahoo doesn’t have the best system in place, they’re both much better than Microsoft AdCenter’s. There were two main problems with AdCenter that I came across, making updates and manually updating ad group settings.
There might be an easy way to go about submitting everything, but I didn’t find it when I was adding my keywords. First, I made the mistake of not putting the {param2} as my destination URL within my import sheet and wanted to bulk update the creatives. I couldn’t find any info on how to update creatives using the bulk sheets so I tried to just resubmit it and hoped for positive results. However, pretty much as expected, it just created duplicates of the creatives. I then started to manually delete the old creatives, but because of the poor navigation, that was taking forever. Instead, I just deleted the whole campaign and submitted a new one.
The 2nd problem included trying to change setting. Ideally, I wanted to set dayparting and geotargeted settings, but Microsoft requires you to do this per ad group. Again, with their poor navigational structure, that would’ve taken forever and it just wasn’t worth the time it would take. In addition to not being able to manually navigate between ad groups efficiently, for geotargeting, Microsoft doesn’t allow you to select all states and then remove ones you don’t want. Instead, they force you to select each state you want. I needed most states so selected each one for the number of ad groups I have would have taken quite some time.
Overall, after getting the hang of it, I was able to submit a new campaign in Microsoft within a few minutes, but if the campaigns had a requirement to have certain settings like geotargeting or dayparting, then it would’ve taken me at least a full day if not more to get everything updated.
Campaign Management
Campaign management using AdCenter is pretty poor overall. Their drop down menus are nice to use to navigate, but it’d be nice to also have a “next” and “back” button. Making bulk changes is difficult except for certain aspects such as bids or turning on/off content. In general, making changes within the account is pretty annoying. It can be slow, pretty difficult to navigate and just cumbersome. The system also seems to perform much better in internet explorer rather than Firefox which, to me, is a negative.
Reporting
Reporting is decent. Microsoft offers automated reporting, however, I’ve noticed that one of my reports is being sent in the evening rather than early morning so when I’m creating my own reports, I still need to login and run the report. The online reports do offer a filtering option making online reporting more useful than Google’s or Yahoo’s. It’s a nice feature, but I like to play with the data more within excel than in the browser. The reporting aspects do offer the ability to customize the data columns similar to Google which is definitely a good thing.
Performance
Actual performance is one of the most important aspects of AdCenter. My ROI is actually higher on MSN than on the other 2 engines and the traffic volume is about 10% of what I get from Google. I haven’t spent too much time optimizing the bids yet, so I should be able to expect to see that ROI come down a little but also an overall increase in volume and overall profit.
Overall
Microsoft looks to have improved their traffic and performance since the last time I’ve used their system. Overall, I think it can be worth using AdCenter, but there’s still a lot of improvement that should be made by Microsoft. Due to their current issues and traffic volume, I still won’t be putting as much time into Microsoft as I would other engines, but I will be using it as a way to diversify my marketing efforts.
Related posts
Sarah Bird, COO over at SEOmoz posted an article today about collecting payments from a client that is past due. Besides being the COO, Sarah is also a lawyer that has “the challenging task of keeping mozzers on the right side of the law” - are there a lot of SEO agencies out there with an on staff lawyer? Anyways, being a lawyer, she is able to provide valuable adivce on the legalities of marketing tactics and business practices.
With the economy the way it is, more and more companies won’t be able to pay their bills. This can include your client or the merchant running an affiliate program or maybe it’s you not making the payments. Whatever the case may be, knowing what rights you have to collect can help you get all or at least part of your hard earned money.
I recommend reading the entire article, but to give you a brief summary, your first steps should be:
- getting a personal guarantee
- getting a promissory note.
If you’re still unsuccessful at getting paid, then you have some other options:
- Using a collection agency
- Taking the other party to small claims court
- Having your attorney send a debt collection letter to them
- Having your attorney file a lawsuit against them
- Let it go.
Related posts
Just a day after I posted an article about how Google is opening the barriers to entry, Marissa Meyer, a VP at Google announced that the data from SearchWiki could be used to change overall search results.
if “thousands of people” were to knock a search result off a search page, they’d be likely to make a change.
While large corporate companies most likely won’t be knocked out of the SERPs for high volume terms, what would happen if one affiliate website decides to create a network of bots that automatically vote down the 20-30 smaller guys that are ahead of your site. All of a sudden, their site starts showing ahead of many others. You don’t need to make your rankings better if you can make your competitions’ worse.
This may not seem like a big deal, but one way black hats operate is by using a exploiting a small hole in the system and scaling the crap out of it. Imagine if you could vote down 20-30 sites on 1000 or more different keywords. You may only go from getting 0 clicks per day to 1 click per day, but overall, you’re getting 1000+ clicks a day. Scale it a bit more and you’re getting 5000, 10,000, 50,000 free clicks per day.
Obviously, this is all just speculation, nobody knows how any of this will actually pan out. However, I do know that Digg used to be a much better site before it started to get gamed. Will Google suffer the same fate?
Other People’s Opinions…
Google Search Wiki To Soon Include An Off Button. Thank You, Marissa.
Black Hats Salivate as Google Prepares to Add SearchWiki to Algorithm
Google May Use SearchWiki For Ranking Purposes
Related posts
People use Google for its quality and for its speed. Within both the organic and paid search world, Google has consistently been able to be more free of spam and lower quality (a subjective term) websites than the competition. If the worldwide economy gets worse, it won’t be surprising to see Google becoming more and more lax with their rules and policies, all of which could end up being the catalyst Microsoft needs to take market share away from Google.
2008 has been the year that Google began tightening its financial belt. Most recently, they’ve snubbed their golden geese (see: non-corporate advertisers) by being cheap and canceling their annual holiday gifts as if they’re in such dire financial trouble that they need to do it. By the way, Google is expecting to make around $6 billion in profit for 2008.
Specifically with their product, Google has been changing their bidding policies more and more lately. On an unscientific note, they also seem to be allowing arbitragers to make a comeback and very low quality sites to market their wares.
They’ve been updating their organic side of the business too. They’ve added SearchWiki and while I can’t seem to find the sources, I believe I’ve read about and have also seen first hand, Google search results getting worse in general. As an example, when trying to find the specific estimates for Google’s 2008 profits, I ended up getting results for news articles, but none of them had the correct info. At times, I’d also get results that had info on earnings, but they were for other companies, not Google’s. When I searched on Yahoo, first result was to Google’s investor relations page - probably should’ve just went directly there in the first place.
Meanwhile, a bit north of the Googleplex, Microsoft has been working hard on seriously getting into the search game. They’ve been using Live Cash Back, have been poaching Yahoo’s Yahoos, has special promotions for SEMPO members, signed a toolbar deal with Dell and has most recently has become much more willing to work with Yahoo again (who didn’t see that one coming?). While not all of these ideas will have a positive return for Microsoft, the combined payoff will keep Google on their toes and hopefully will give us advertisers more options for placing our ad dollars.
Google still has a huge lead over, well everybody. They are to search what Microsoft was/is to operating systems. At the same time, Microsoft has a warchest that they’re not afraid of spending. They’re working hard on improving their search technology and creating partnerships to increase their market share. If Google isn’t careful, they’ll create an opening for Microsoft to exploit which will lead to even fiercer competition since they both have similar traits: lots of cash, monopolistic, extremely competitive.
Related posts
Just over a month ago, Google said they would begin accepting ads for beer and wine. Now they have announced that they will allow ads for hard liquor as well.
This fall, we changed our policy around beer, for the first time allowing advertisements of its sale in the U.S. via AdWords. And starting today, in response to advertiser feedback we’ve received over the years, we’ll permit the advertisement of hard alcohol and liqueurs that target the U.S.
To comply with the updated hard alcohol and liqueurs policy, advertisers must promote the information about hard alcohol and liqueurs that their websites contain, such as recipes and brand messages. Ads that directly promote the sale of hard alcohol and liqueurs are still not permissible through our program. In contrast, advertisements for beer may directly promote its sale.
It looks like some advertisers are already (or have already been) advertising on liquor terms:
Related posts
In the beginning of September, I added a phone number to one of my affiliate sites as I’ve always believed and have seen that having a phone number prominently displayed on your site will help both in adding a sense of trust to your site and also will give users who may be apprehensive about dishing out personal information online another, more comfortable way to convert. The results I’ve seen so far have not been what I would have expected.
Since adding the the phone number to the site, the phone number has only been used by 0.88% of my visitors. Not horrible considering most users who are using the site should be converting online anyways. However, the number of conversions received from phone-ins is quite a bit lower, coming in at exactly 0.
With barely any information regarding what the callers are asking about or looking for, it’s difficult to say why none of them are converting. From talking with my affiliate manager, I’ve been told that for this particular vertical, not many people in general will convert over the phone leading me to believe it may just be vertical specific.
So why are people calling? My best guess is that most people assume it’s a general company number and might be calling to get information. I already get plenty of emails from people asking questions that don’t really have to do with the products and services offered on the site so it’s not difficult to believe that they’re just calling in for that purpose.
From my own data, it looks like using a phone number won’t always help increase conversions for your website. At the same time, I’d still recommend listing it somewhere on your site if you’re able to do so. Phone numbers usually work for any type of retail site as some people would rather give their payment information to a person rather than on some website. I also feel that displaying a phone number will instill a greater sense of trust and legitimacy with your visitors.
Related posts
On Black Friday, Sears.com was overloaded with volume and crashed. Their site began to crawl at around 9:30am until it finally succumbed to the increased traffic and went down altogether. From 10:30am - 12:30pm, Sears put up the following message.
For basically 3+ hours, Sears was losing out on thousands of potential customers due to their network not being sufficient enough to handle the load. One thing they did right was provide links to their other stores, and more importantly, to their weekly ad. They could have taken it a bit further to retain some of the customers they lost during the day and potential gain some extra ones.
If instead of just apoligizing, Sears went ahead and asked for the person’s email address in exchange for a $5 off $15 or similar type of coupon, they could have a) obtained some information about the visitor that could be used to advertise to them in the future and b) would give them incentive to not just go find the tools or discount TV the person was looking for over at Home Depot or Walmart.
Related posts
It looks like Microsoft is teaming up with SEMPO to attract more advertisers. They’re offering $1,000 in free clicks to SEMPO members. If you’re not currently a SEMPO member, you will need to register by December 31, 2008 to be eligible.
Even though details are fairly scarce for non-members, it looks like if you’re an individual and/or sole proprietor, you can sign up for as little as $299 per year and still get the offer. That means that you’ll end up getting $701 in free clicks from Microsoft. For coporate customers, the cost of membership is $1000 so you just end up getting a free 1 year membership to SEMPO (if you were planning on spending the money with Microsoft anyways).
The other caveat, from Richard Saling’s blog:
Get Your Promo Code for $1000 in Free* Clicks Now
To get your $1000 in free clicks to use with your Search adCenter account, request your promo code now
Set Up Your adCenter Account
When you are ready to get started, for as little as $5 one-time set up fee, you can set up your adCenter account by going to the adCenter Account Sign-Up page. Be sure input your promo code during sign up in order to get your $1000 in free clicks.
That sounds to me like you’ll need to open up a new adCenter account to use the promo code.
Join SEMPO
Related posts
This is the first I’ve heard of any layoffs at Google. Webguild is reporting that since August, Google has been laying off hundreds of workers.
Why isn’t this being reported? Well according to Webguild, Google actually has around 30,000 workers even though the company publicly reports only around 20,000. They get by reporting these extra 10,000 employees by classifying them as “temporary” and shifting their job functions around every few months.
If this is true, then it adds more evidence that this recent economic downturn is affecting Google more than they’d like to admit.
Related posts
« Previous Entries
