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Three Tips for Optimizing Paid Search Campaigns
In addition to search engine optimization, there exists the pay-per-click / paid search / paid inclusion branch of search engine marketing. We’ve all dipped our feet into search advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing or Microsoft adCenter (or even more vertical-specific networks).
Certain keywords can get quite costly, so here are some tips for optimizing paid search campaigns and getting the most bang for our budget bucks. These tips all center around efficiently allocating our funds.
1. Choice of Network
AdWords campaigns can be specifically targeted to the search network (i.e., in the SERPs), and/or the content network (i.e., in AdSense). Similarly, Yahoo Search Marketing campaigns can be directed to their search network and/or their content network (Yahoo Publisher Network). The search network is generally where you’ll get better conversions and ROI, so bid up if you’re exclusively advertising there.
If you’re still advertising in the content network, then be sure to exclude poor sites from it using site exclusion options.
Tags: adCenter, AdWords, pay-per-click, search traffic, SEM, Yahoo Search MarketingCinco do Mayo? Ask.com Misspells.
While the rest of the world celebrated "Cinco de Mayo" yesterday, Ask.com’s homepage flaunted a "Cinco do Mayo" as seen below.
It was probably just a hasty typo and I don’t think anyone will (or should) be fired over this, but let’s poke some fun at Ask for the oversight anyway. 
Random thoughts that come to mind:
- With such a small percentage of the search market, who really cares whether Ask can spell or not?
- Now might be a good time to boost Ask.com’s staff from 460 to 461 people.
- Ask.com’s new focus of catering their search engine to women has taken priority over proofreading.
Today, Ask’s homepage has a link to a news story about Cyclone Nargis’ impact on Myanmar (Burma), and a link to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies.
Tags: AskSecrets to Search Engine Optimized Content
We have all heard the phrase "content is king," and unique content indeed reigns supreme. However, beyond the mantra of writing highly unique content, exists additional SEO copywriting secrets. Some of these "secrets" are simply SEO guidelines that simply get neglected from being applied to the art of copywriting. Let’s look at some applications of SEO in generating search engine optimized content.
1. Including Target Keyphrases
Apart from achieving a moderate keyword density for your target keywords, you should be including your target keyphrases as well. (You should be doing this concurrently). Your title and header tags need to include your main keyphrase, which should also be sprinkled throughout your content. Other ingredients to your search engine optimized content cake are variations to the main keyphrase, along with secondary target keyphrases.
Note: It’s perfectly alright to deviate slightly to secondary keyphrases, as well as overlap keyphrases between pages on your website. If anything, this will make your entire website more relevant and help maintain authority.
Tags: keyword research, SEO, web developmentApril 2008 PageRank Update and VisualRank
Google datacenters have been busy the past couple of days as they were updating toolbar PageRanks (TBPR) across the board. The last complete PageRank update was in late February. SearchEnginePanel.com maintained its PR2 since getting ranked, and is now up to PR3 from this latest update. I’m attributing the small step to writing fresh unique content coupled with promotion through social media, and some of you may have noticed our posts in StumbleUpon or Digg.
More Google News
Coming soon (or perhaps not so soon) to a Google near you - VisualRank. As the name implies, VisualRank will be the image-equivalent of PageRank for web pages. Images will begin to be weighed and ranked just as pages have, but I doubt it will have much of an effect on image search traffic. After all, PageRank is only a mediocre measurement of a page’s link building initiatives, and is far from being a strong indicator of SERP ranking.
More SEP News
During the announcement of our latest theme in late March, we hinted that we had a little project underway. Well, here it is. We’ve recently added a lexicon to our blog to help decipher some of the more cryptic search marketing acronyms and some general search marketing terms. The list will never be exhaustive, but it will be kept updated to contain the more relevant terms in the industry. So for you loyal SEP subscribers that get our feed through email or a feed reader, stop on by to our Lexicon page and brush up on your vocabulary! 
And Speaking of Subscribers…
Some of you may have noticed that our subscriber count dropped from the 60-70 range to the low 40s a couple of weeks ago. I was curious as to how many actual subscribed readers there are of SEP, and decided to purge the email list of non-readers. Basically, I emailed everyone and told them to reply if they wanted to keep their subscription. So even though the subscriber count is hovering around 40 right now (with only 20-30% being from email), it’s a much more accurate depiction of true human readership.
Tags: Google, link building, PageRank, search traffic, SEP, social media marketingGoogle Website Optimizer Available to Public
It’s been about half a year since Website Optimizer beta was released along with a two-part webinar series that introduced the nuts and bolts of the service. The first webinar was a little shaky from what I remember, and people had issues downloading the right software and getting the sound to work through the phonelines.
Okay. Enough digressing.
Prior to Website Optimizer, conducting A/B and multivariate testing would entail some complicated tailor-made sets of tracking code that was neither robust nor scalable. All of you analytics/ROI/tracking fanatics out there know what I’m talking about. Anyway, Website Optimizer has been declared out of beta and ready for the masses! I’m surprised that it wasn’t released earlier because it fills a void that few third-party systems out there can fill efficiently (and cheaply).
Their website says:
Website Optimizer, Google’s free website testing and optimization tool, allows you to increase the value of your existing websites and traffic without spending a cent. Using Website Optimizer to test and optimize site content and design, you can quickly and easily increase revenue and ROI whether you’re new to marketing or an expert.
Website Optimizer is indeed free and a valuable tool for split testing, but I can only partially agree that it can be done "quickly and easily."
Tags: Google, SEM, tools