PPC Basics in 10 Minutes

One of my new favorite blog posts is SEOMoz's white board Fridays - think UPS whiteboard commercial only instead of experts talking about shipping, you have experts talking about SEO and PPC. I found Scott Willoughby's White Board on PPC Basics to be highly informative and thought I would share it as well. Enjoy!

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday-PPC Basics with Tom Critchlow from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Firefox 3 Download Day 2008

The official date for the launch of Firefox 3 is June 17, 2008. By pledging to Download Firefox 3 on Jun 17th you can join the cause and be part of a Guinness World Record.

If you are looking for Firefox plugins to aid in your SEO efforts, check out the top 25 SEO Plugins for Firefox.

PPC Ad Copy Competition: Myanmar Cyclone Donation

Distilled wanted to do something to mark and bring attention to the launch of their new suite of PPC tools. But, they are bringing attention to their new venture by doing a bit of good - helping out with the Myanmar (Burma) cyclone appeal by catering to one of their strengths: PPC advertising!

So what does all this mean? A PPC ad copy writing competition of course! Based on the Myanmar Cyclone tragedy, whoever writes the best PPC ad for charity wins!

Here are the rules:

1. You write a blog post about the competition and include your competing ad(s) in the copy of the blog post - then link to it in Distilled's comments so they know of your desire to enter the competition. The purpose of your post is to spread the word about the Myanmar (Burma) cyclone appeal.

2. Ads must follow the Google Ads format: 25 characters headline (1st line), 35 characters 2nd line, 35 characters 3rd line.

3. Up to three ads may be submitted. However, make sure you rank your submissions as the ads may be limited depending on the number of entries.

4. The landing page you’ll be sending traffic to is http://www.worldvision.org.uk/.

5. They will be purchasing just one keyphrase: ‘Myanmar cyclone appeal’

6. Distilled will put all the ad entries into a PPC campaign with the Myanmar (Burma) cyclone donation page on World Vision as the landing page - deadline is Friday 13th June.

7. Distilled is also fronting the budget to run the PPC campaign for a limited time. The longer the campaign is run the better as it will lead to more donations (and more statistical significance for those competing!). So if anyone is interested in contributing to the PPC budget please get in touch.

8. The ad that performs the best and drives the most amount of traffic wins.

So, all that said, here are my entries from first to last:

{KeyWord:Myanmar Cyclone Aid}
Help Volunteers Rebuild Lives in
Myanmar with Just $25. Donate Today

Myanmar Cyclone Aid
2.4 Million Homeless and Hungry.
Help Cyclone Victims. Donate Today!

Myanmar Cyclone Aid
Their lives were changed in seconds
Help Provide Lifes Essentials

Let me know what you think of the ad copy! (Oh, and keep your fingers crossed we raise a large amount of funds for this terrible tragedy!)

Scam: Domain Listing Services Corp

I received a startling letter in the mail the other day. I register most of my domains via www.GoDaddy.com simply because I get a lot of discounts due to the number of domains I register. Regardless, I can only assume this company whores the 'whois' information from new domain purchases and then sends out a letter advertising their horrific services! If you received a letter that looks like this, BEWARE:


Directly from the letter:

WEBSITE ADDRESS LISTING INCLUDES:
Domain name submission with 8 key words/ phrases to 25 MAJOR search engines, quarterly search engine submissions

Directly from their website:
We submit your website 4 times a year to over 25 search engines and business directories like these below...

Google	Yahoo	MSN	AltaVista	Excite
About	Overture	Netscape	Lycos	HotBot
Quickseek	Scrub The Web	Search Hippo	Alexa Web Search	Metadata Search Spider
Search It	Super Snooper	Ultraseek	Info Probe	whatUseek Network

Before we go any further....THIS IS NOT A GOOD DEAL! NOT FOR $75!! NOT EVER!!
What are the issues with this? First off, when you submit your website to a search engine you don't get to pick 'key words / phrases'. You simply submit your URL (www.example.com).

Second, search engines have evolved tremendously since the 'early days' and the need to submit your website to search engines is no longer needed. Rather, gather a few links from some authority websites soon after you launch your new website and allow Google and Yahoo to find your website naturally by doing what they do best - following links to find new content.

Thirdly, and based on my second point, continually submitting your website to search engines (for instance the 'quarterly submissions' advertised above) IS SPAM and will only result in getting your website banned completely from the major search engines.

I was so bothered by the fact that this company, Domain Listing Services Corp, is making God knows how much money off of uneducated people I decided to do some digging.

Here is a great post from Danifer Web Services.

Here is another from HyperSensory.com which notes that DLSCorp.net also operates as ilscorp - Internet Listing Service Corp. - yes, another scam!

Yet another from Les Jones Blog (take the time to read through the comments! It is well worth it!)

Rip-Off Report: Domain Listing Service Corp - says it all!

Please feel free to contact the following organizations with your complaints:

FTC
http://www.ftc.org

Better Business Bureau
http://www.bbb.org

ZoneEdit - Their DNS host
http://www.zoneedit.com or mail support@zoneedit.com

WaveRiderHosting - their hosting company
http://www.waveriderhosting.com

All PPC Search Engines Not Created Equal

There was an interesting post in the Microsoft adCenter blog recently regarding the varying tactics needed to run successful paid search campaigns in differing search engines. After reading through the article I quickly realized something! I've been approaching adCenter all wrong! Here is what I read when it hit me:

Some advertisers optimize their pay per click campaigns for other engines and then export them with little change to adCenter. This may save time, but it doesn’t always optimize for the distinctly different character of Microsoft’s traffic. In other words, you may be leaving a pile of money on the table.

Lets face it! Google and Yahoo capture 85-90% of all search traffic while MSN gathers up the remaining 10-15%. In like manner, I had been dividing my campaign's ad spend in like manner - 85-90% between Google and Yahoo and throwing 10-15% at adCenter.

Where the problem lies in this is that despite the varying differences in traffic percentages, there is always room for improvement. Not to mention that in a few cases, adCenter carries with it a significantly higher conversion rate. This blog post in particular focused on bidding strategies in relation to the long tail of keywords which is typical for an Adwords or YSM paid search campaign. To counter-act the lower traffic level in MSN's adCenter, concentrate on a select few keywords that are closer to the head.

Here are a few additional reasons to NOT copy and past your Adwords campaign to other paid search vendors:

• Character Limits: This directly applies to Yahoo!, where your headline is allowed 40 characters. AdWords and adCenter only allow 25. You should do your best to maximize the space given to you in Yahoo!. Just think of the extra keywords you can fit in that space!
• Keyword Bids: Beyond merely making bid decisions based on the long tail of keywords, you should make those decisions based on the search engine you’re working in. The bid you have set in AdWords is based on Google’s traffic and competitive landscape. Those factors are altogether different when dealing with Microsoft and Yahoo!. All three of these search engines offer their own unique bid forecasting tools for a reason. In a perfectly optimized world, a single keyword will have a different bid in each account.
• DKI, Keyword Insertion, Dynamic Text: Each of the search engines takes a slightly different approach to DKI. While Google and Yahoo!’s systems are nearly identical, there are vast differences when Microsoft is thrown into the mix. In adCenter, you can dynamically insert the keyword, but also have the ability to set multiple parameters per keyword which can be inserted into your ad texts automatically. Taking the time to learn the ins and outs of these tools is important and can directly benefit your CTR!
• Match Types and Negative Keywords: When you copy and paste your campaigns from one search engine to another, you will likely erase your negative keyword lists. And your match types will be eradicated when copying into Yahoo! (no exact, phrase or broad matching!). Negative keywords and match types are such a vital part of the PPC arsenal and should not be forgotten. Take the time to research the right negative keywords and match types for each search engine and implement them accordingly.