Search Engine Marketing is so often touted as the best thing ever to happen to marketing, the be all and end all of promotion and the most trackable and closely scrutinized of all marketing avenues.
Many companies start out with the mentality “Ok we need to do SEM, get it setup and lets spend some money getting all the clicks we can get” without giving a thought to what they REALLY want to get out of their SEM campaigns. The more clicks a company generally receives and the lower their Cost Per Click the happier they are and there are always lots of handshakes at meetings and happy campers.

This mentality is WRONG!!!!! Let me explain why. Before any search marketing campaign starts you should truly consider what your business goals are, some examples would be; Customer Acquisition, Information Requests (customer submitting a request for more information from your company), Click Volume, Revenue Per Visitor. Now there are many more potential positive outcomes from your search marketing but they were just a few examples. The reason why basing your SEM success purely on click goals or cost per click is that it doesnt accurately reflect your businesses ROI and this is where conversion tracking comes in.

Conversion tracking works by inserting code onto your website which allows marketers to track actions on your website and correlate which keywords, ads or adgroups are driving the greatest amount of real value to your business. This isn’t rocket science and let me reiterate what i am saying here; Without conversion tracking or properly defined business goals which allow for some kind of real world measurement of success you are THROWING YOUR MONEY AWAY!

Ok, so now that we have my little rant out of the way you may be asking “what options are there for tracking success on my website?” Who would have guessed that there are literally hundreds of free solutions out there however the two most obvious and most powerful are Googles conversion tracking and Yahoo’s conversion tracking tools. Both of these are good, free, solutions which allow every aspect of your campaigns to be measured against your business goals, optimised to increase the performance in relation to that and also to easily be reported on.

The distinct advantage that Google’s conversion tracking has over Yahoo’s tool is that it ties directly into Google Analytics and then becomes a far more powerful tool for tracking every aspect of your sites performance.

If you have any questions regarding conversion tracking and how it can benefit you, or if you just think you need some help in defining your business goals. Come on over to LoveClients.com and we are more than happy to speak with you!

Popularity: 79%

Google recently announced some changes to its display URL policy - What is means is that any URL used in a paid search ad on Google must now actually exist whereas before these URL’s were simply used for display purposes.

The repurcusions of this are not that serious and simply mean that websites now need cleaner URL’s ie: www.yoursite.com/search instead of something like www.yoursite.com/index.php?page=search - This is great for organic optimisation and for vanity URL’s.

Good work Google, keep weeding out the junk!

The following post is the actual announcement from the AdWords team on Googles Official Inside Adwords Blog:

An update to display URL policy

We’d like to give you advance notice of an update to our display URL policy, which will take effect on April 1st. While the majority of advertisers will not be affected at all, action will be required from those who are. Please take a few minutes to read this post thoroughly, as the information below should help you determine whether you will be affected by this change.

In response to advertiser and user feedback, and in an effort to provide more relevant advertising results and a higher quality experience for our users, we have made the decision to no longer allow certain exceptions with regards to our display URL policy. This includes, but is not limited to redirects and vanity URLs. This policy will be strictly enforced regardless of past approvals and will apply to all advertisers, beginning on April 1st.

In line with our existing policy, we will continue to require that your ad’s display URL match its destination URL (the URL of your landing page).

For example, if your destination URL is www.google.com, your display URL must also be www.google.com. The following would not be acceptable display URLs for an ad for www.google.com:

• www.google.co.uk - because this URL leads to a different site
• www.gogle.com - even though this URL simply redirects to www.google.com it is still not acceptable
• www.gooogle.com - because this URL leads to a page showing content identical to www.google.com

What about tracking URLs?
We do understand that many advertisers utilize tracking URLs within the destination field of their ads. Therefore, if the URL of your landing page matches that of your display URL, your ads will be approved.

For example:

Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
–> Landing page URL: www.google.com would be acceptable

Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
–> Landing page URL: www.trackingurl.com would not be acceptable
Are sub-domains still acceptable?
Yes, the use of sub-domains and additional text within the display will continue to be acceptable provided the top-level domain matches the URL of your landing page.

For example, display URLs such as the following:

sub.google.com
google.com/extratext

www.google.com/extratext

would all be acceptable for the landing page URL below, as the top-level domain of google.com is matched:

http://sub.google.com/miscellaneous

In light of this update to display URL policy, we’d encourage you to make any necessary changes to your ads in advance of the April 1st date to ensure that they’ll run without disruption by future disapprovals related to this policy.

Thanks for reading this far, and please note that more information will be provided before April 1st via alerts in all AdWords accounts.

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 at 2:07 PM

Popularity: 32%

Every business that is on the internet has a domain name (Well hopefully they do in this day and age!) - Now, the problem is that not every business knows the true value of their domain name or for that matter the value in acquiring “category killer” domain names before time runs out.

First of all as a consumer, doesn’t going to a site like lets say shopping.com give you the instant feeling of a credible site, Something you know you can trust? - To me it does! It also does to your users, consider the domain name in your PPC ads as another sign of relevancy to the user, if it contains your keywords you will get more clicks!

Now consider this domains are sold every single week for close to or over a million dollars, something which costs somebody $7 per year to maintain or lease sells for over a million bucks. Now thats insane! The scary thing is that domains are only ever going to keep increasing in value week after week.

I won’t keep rambling on in this post however i recommend you take a look at this site DNJournal - This site lists PUBLISHED domain sales every week. Thing is, probably only 10-20% of domain sales are actually reported anywhere so that might give you an idea of the kind of deals going on behind closed doors.

Lots more to come on domain names so stay tuned, just wanted you to all farmilairise yourselves with some of the info before we get stuck into it in more depth.

Popularity: 12%

The new york post wrote a story about Yahoo’s Jerry Yang’s emotions getting the better of him and that it could be clouding his judgement when it comes to properly considering the Microsoft takeover proposal for Yahoo. Jerry openly despises Microsoft and its no secret, so its quite possible that the deal hasn’t even been properly considered as it should have been given the companies recent poor performance.

So Yes, Jerry isn’t a bill gates. He came up with one massive idea and is worth a few billion dollars but i can’t see his business skills extending further than that of Yahoo. The board of directors should have hired a seasoned veteran, a CEO with some business accumen to take over after Terry Semmel left and that decision has led to the companies poor share price (Apart from the fact Google is whipping them in search).

Good luck to you Yahoo, but its a very long road to stay independant for you at this point. Maybe it’s time to speak to your friend Rupert about that other option!

Popularity: 3%

You have all come across universal search whether you know it or not. Those pretty Google maps which keep popping up in your search results. Example: “Los Angeles Hotels” or when you are looking for the timezone for England to work out if its too late to call your relatives “England Time Zone”

Ok, now why the hell am i even talking about this and how is it relevant to your marketing efforts? Wel, the tricky thing is that if a site is optimised correctly then yor content can showup on Googles homepage as an image rather than just a text link! Wow, imagine the traffic you would receive from a contextually relevant banner ad on the front page of Google!

Just take a moment to think about the potential. Your sites contextually relevant content, featured on the HOME PAGE of Google. How much more traffic do you think you would get compared to all your competitors? 5 times, 10 times? Thats some powerful stuff!

Universal search brings some amazing possibilities to the table but it also takes new strategies and some out of the box thinking in order to properly optimize sites. My point in writing this post, is that Universal search is out there and you have to be aware of it. We are always trying to stay on the cutting edge for our clients so rest assured i will be making more posts shortly on this topic!

Popularity: 13%

In case you have been hiding in a cave for the last few weeks and don’t read newspapers or watch the tv, You would know that Microsoft made a bid for the once mighty search engine Yahoo in a deal worth over 44 Billion dollars! After roughly a week of deliberation on the offer Yahoo has now officially rejected the offer saying that it substantially undervalues the company and is a predatory move designed to take advantage of the current share price slump.

Analysts and search guru’s have been a buzz over the possible implications a merged Yahoo and MSN would have for the broader search community and i have just one comment to make regarding this. Any kind of serious competition to Googles almost total market dominance has to be a good thing, regardless of who the player that consolidates the number two search spot ends up being.

More recent reports have come in that News Corp is supposedly in talks to merge its myspace and fox web properties along with some private cash on the side as well with Yahoo in order to gain a 20% stake in the company which would value Yahoo at roughly 50 billion total.

No doubt there will be more updates to come as the battle for Yahoo continues.

Popularity: 14%

Undoubtably the best free web analytics software is Google Analytics - When Google first released this service i was lucky enough to be on the beta test and drive it before most others did and even version one was a very powerful tool for any webmaster. Several years have now passed and the very latest iteration of Google Analytics was launched not too long ago, bringing a much improved interface and the ability to compare information in real time with the flash header is a big step forward.

Google Analytics gives users the ability to track conversions, pageviews, unique browsers, keyword referrals and so much more and i highly recommend that if you have never used an analytics based software before, practise with this first because it is an easy to use, powerful piece of software which will help improve your sites performance and your understanding of your visitors!

More to come including a how to guide for Google Analytics

Popularity: 27%

Four of the largest U.S. newspaper publishers have teamed up to create an online ad-sales network, the second such partnership to be formed in the newspaper industry in recent years.

Gannett Co., Hearst Corp., the New York Times Co. and Tribune Co. are setting up the network as a stand-alone company called quadrantOne. Like a consortium created by Yahoo Inc. and a group of newspapers last year, it will allow national advertisers to buy space on certain Web sites operated by their newspapers in a bid to capture new sales as revenue at their print editions disappear.

QuadrantOne will include more than 120 papers, whose Web sites reach a total of 50 million unique monthly visitors, the company said. All four publishers have devoted funding to the company.

The network doesn’t include Gannett’s largest paper, USA Today, or the New York Times, which already have their own national sales operations. Instead, those companies will use the system to place ads on local titles such as the New York Times’s Boston Globe.

QuadrantOne is designed to let national advertisers buy space in many local papers as well as on the Web sites of local television affiliates, without media buyers and planners having to make calls to multiple companies. If a marketer “can make one phone call to a portal or 100 in local markets to get the same audience” for their product, “the answer…would be a no-brainer,” said quadrantOne interim Chief Executive Dana Hayes.

Popularity: 28%

Ninemsn’s head of innovation, Jennifer Wilson, has quit after just four months in the job claiming she was constrained in delivering her ideas.

Her departure from Ninemsn’s product and network strategy division comes shortly after Jane O’Connell left as director of the unit last December.

Wilson, who is one of Australia’s most respected experts on mobile marketing, was responsible for new developments in engagement, interaction, social networking and user generated content at Ninemsn.

Explaining why she resigned from the company, Wilson would only say: “I had a lot of ideas and I needed to be slightly less constrained in my ability to deliver on them.”

Wilson said her position, which was newly created in August last year, would not be replaced and said Ninemsn was “rethinking” the role of product and network strategy unit.

A spokeswoman at Ninemsn said the unit would still operate but added a restructuring has taken place following the departures of both O’Connell and Wilson.

Wilson said she would be doing consulting work and was working on securing backing for ideas that she wanted to develop.

Before ninemsn, Wilson was previously managing director of HWW, a content provider and developer of online sites which was bought by Ninemsn.

Popularity: 1%

Popularity: 26%