Businesses need to bid Smarter NOT Higher!

Writing by mattp on Friday , 8 of February , 2008 at 12:22 pm

As more and more businesses realise the potential of advertising via search engines, the “bidding war” on search terms is hotting up.

Increasing bids on paid advertising on Google, MSN and Yahoo may increase your position in the listings, but with systems such as AdWords “Quality Score”, the bid is only the tip of the iceberg.

Quality Score ensures that advertisers with a well-considered search term list, relevant ad text and a good history of CTR (Click Through Rate) are rewarded over those that simply bid higher and higher.

Many businesses attempt to run their own Pay Per Click campaigns, selecting what they believe to be the most relevant search terms for their industry, then set a budget and aim to bid for the “top spots” on each search engine.

Without conducting the relevant search term research, optimising the campaign and then monitoring ad performance along with click through rates, the Quality Score will suffer.

The post-click analysis (utilising tracking software to link search terms to a goal such as an enquiry form or purchase receipt page) also performs a vital role, ensuring you bid on the correct search terms, have well-targetted adverts and are sending searchers to the most relevant page on your website (the landing page).

Additional attention to detail when running a Pay Per Click campaign is more essential now then ever before!

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Yahoo + Microsoft = a threat for Google?

Writing by mattp on Monday , 4 of February , 2008 at 2:32 pm

The media has been inundated over the last few days with details of the proposed Yahoo buy-out by Microsoft for £23bn.

Google is said to be concerned and wants regulators to oversee the deal, as it would allow one company too much control over email and instant messaging accounts.

Over the last few years, both MSN and Yahoo have failed to make any major dents in Google AdWords monopoly of the search engine market.

Google still represent in excess of 70% of searches made via the internet, with MSN and Yahoo fluctuating between 2% and 10% over the last 5 years.

Various shake-ups and “aggressive restructures” have failed to improve the situation at Yahoo and the final quarter of 2007 saw a 27% drop in profits.

This is a potentially exciting time for pay per click marketing as ROI (return on investment) and customer service from MSN and Yahoo have been well documented as far inferior to Google.

The merger/acquisition may finally create a search engine platform that can challenge Google, hopefully providing a few incentives for advertisers to reassess the distribution of their search engine marketing budgets.

LandingNet await the outcome with baited breath!

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Google Adsense Video Units

Writing by Nicky on Tuesday , 9 of October , 2007 at 1:06 pm

Google have introduced video units on Google Adsense.

Google have teamed up with around 100 YouTubers to supply relevant videos for people who have adsense on their site.

Video units enable AdSense publishers to display videos from several YouTube content partners. The video units are ad-supported, and the ads are relevant to both the video and the site content

If you have a paid for advertisement campaigns, it is likely that some of your ads will be shown on other peoples websites who employ Google Adsense.

Many webmasters are now using videos on their websites as a tool to keep people interested in their site and to keep them coming back - if you use, or are thinking of using videos to increase your traffic as well as growing your audience, then showing your video via content distribution on Google Adsense could prove to be a benefit.

For more information on Google Adsense and Video units, visit the official Google Blog.

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