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Yahoo! Search Marketing – What You Need to Know

By Jason Drohn in Featured

Yahoo! Search Marketing is trailing behind Google AdWords program, we are all aware about that. However, this is exactly the reason why you should try it- few competition, lesser bid fees and a higher conversion. Online marketers/advertisers who want to test out new markets and introduce their products are slowly turning Yahoo! PPC into their new hotspot because of its affordability. Let’s find out what all you should keep in mind while working with Yahoo! PPC.

Benefit from Your Precious Click Through Rate Data: The previous click through trends are utilized to determine the quality of your ad, even though it is definitely not the sole determining gauge of Yahoo! when studying your ad.

Therefore, it means that sometimes you have to be more patient when building your campaign to get a favorable ROI with Yahoo! PPC. The trails of successful campaigns that you may have experience in the past may be exceeded by your possible victories with Yahoo! PPC. Be sure to weigh in all the factors at hand and not just on this. When you’ve decided to run a PPC campaign on Yahoo!, it’s important that you have an upfront investment ready to make sure your campaign is successful. It is important that your first deposit, upon opening your account, will not cause hardship and be prepared to cover additional costs with your campaign. The minimum amount that you need to deposit is $30. Hopefully your campaign will make money, so that is why you have to optimize it and keep track of CPC expenses.

Track Your Ads: Undoubtedly, the only way to ensure the success of your PPC campaigns with Yahoo! is to make sure you are tracking all your statistics. Yahoo! does offer some tools to help you track your stats and generate reports, but you should never rely just on those. The idea is that you want to remove keywords that aren’t responding well to advanced matches and aren’t generating positive results, which can only be achieved when you have detailed information, something which Yahoo! fails to provide. Your advanced match keywords need to be culled with a list of terms to be removed, and the only way to compile this list is with detailed tracking.

If you’re aiming for a flourishing Yahoo! PPC campaign, aim on the minutest areas that need improvement and don’t forget to upgrade the quality of your ads. Bear in mind that the important output of PPC advertising are the results – if you are able to attain a good ROI from impressive results, then you can call for a celebration.

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For more free tips about Yahoo pay per click, check out this article marketinghackz.com/making-your-campaign-on-yahoo-ppc-bring-in-those-profits/. Another resource that you’ll want to have a look at is http://lazyaffiliaterichesreviewed.org/. You’ll get lots of info from there about making money blogging!

What Are The Top Ten Most Visited Sites Of 2010?

By Jamie Lyons in Featured

We all think we know the answer to this question, or at least we have all had a best guess at it. We decided that we would do a bit of digging around and provide for certain the top ten most visited websites (in order) of 2010.

Through a variety of sources we landed at our finished list so sit back and enjoy.

Google

Yes hitting the top spot is of course that rather small search engine Google. I don’t suppose this will surprise anybody but its still good to know that our favorite website is still Google whether we like it or not.

Facebook

Sitting not so far behind is the number one social media website Facebook. Before the inception of social media nobody would have believed that there would have been a website that you would constantly check every single day of your life yet Facebook jumped into our lives and now we have confessed Facebook addicts. How long before there is Facebook rehab?

YouTube

The video sharing network is third in our list because we simply can’t get enough of watching other peoples misfortunes or videos of cats doing human like things. Not to mention dancing babes and that Charlie who likes to bite peoples fingers.

Yahoo

Yahoo still pops up every now and again although considerably a lot less than our number one friend Google. People are still using this search engine and it has jumped in at number four. How long that will last is anybodies guess.

Windows Live

This one surprised us all, but yes another search engine has bounced into our list again not sure if this is by choice or simply because it was preloaded on various machines upon purchase?

Wikipedia

Ah Wikipedia the only website where fact doesn’t really have to come into it. Despite not having to be factual it seems that rather a lot of still visit Wikipedia and take its answers as gospel when arguing with friends. “It says so on Wikipedia so it must be true.”

Blogger

Google’s attempt at a blogging platform. Extremely popular this year but since they have taken the FTP capabilities away I am guessing it won’t be appearing in the list next year.

Baidu

China is rather a large place so its surprising that Baidu has only dropped in at number seven. I can’t really report to much about this search engine (yes another search engine) because everything on it is written in Chinese.

MSN

Search engines are very popular and MSN has come and joined the party. With its very popular instant messaging service this one has come at no surprise as is still the instant messaging tool of choice for lots of people. Its nice to see and will probably hold its own for a long time despite efforts to better it. Google Wave being one of them.

Yahoo Japan

The only website to have a double entry. Yahoo Japan finishes off our top ten listing quite nicely.

That concludes our list of the top 10 most visited websites of 2010 we hope there wasn’t to many shocks in there and lets hope that 2011 brings us some more surprises.

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Written on behalf of Digital Hearing Care and Discount Hearing Aids
www.digitalhearingcare.org.uk
www.discounthearingaids.org.uk

Death of Del.icio.us Leaves Bitter Aftertaste for Yahoo!

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

Del.icio.us fans worldwide are in shock today with the news that Yahoo has decided to terminate the site, along with Altavista, MyBlogLog, AllTheWeb, Yahoo! Bookmarks and Yahoo! Picks and Yahoo! Buzz.

News broke on TechCrunch this morning after a leaked slide from an internal Yahoo! product team meeting fell into the hands of Eric Marcoullier, who co-founded blog social network MyBlogLog. It has since been removed from YFrog, but the slide depicts three columns titled Sunset / Merge / Make Feature with Del.icio.us, Altavista, MyBlogLog, Yahoo! Bookmarks, AllTheWeb, Yahoo! Picks and Yahoo! Buzz listed under the not so subtle *Sunset* column.

Marcoullier tweeted the slide from his account and then all hell broke loose, with Yahoo Product Manager Blake Irving even threatening to fire whomever leaked the slide.

Del.icio.us fans in particular have been very vocal about the news, voicing their opposition to Yahoo’s decision using Twitter hashtags such as #savedelicious and #delicious and even creating an online petition which can be *signed* by retweeting it.

The product terminations come the same week Yahoo! announced layoffs for 4 percent of its global staff.

Twitter Says Yahoo! to a Larger Audience

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

Yahoo and Twitter announced a partnership today that will see Twitter provide Yahoo with access to their full tweet feed, nicknamed The Firehose.

The deal will result in tweets appearing in Yahoo Search as well as other Yahoo properties such as the Yahoo Homepage, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Sports. Yahoo will also integrate Twitter clients into their various applications so that Twitter users can tweet from within the Yahoo network.

The partnership announcement was delivered to media with an embargo, but within a few hours the story broke on the blogosphere and Yahoo pretty much gave the game away with the *clues* they posted on Twitter.

With a worldwide audience of 600 million, Yahoo offers Twitter significant exposure to add to their existing partnerships with the other major search giants Bing and Google.

Microhoo Deal Given Thumbs Up to Proceed

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

Microsoft and Yahoo announced today that their planned Search Alliance has been given the go-ahead by the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission without any restrictions.

The exact implementation is yet to be announced, but will involve Yahoo shifting their organic and paid search operations to Microsoft. Yahoo will then display primary search results from Bing and enhance them with Yahoo content.

From Yahoo’s official press release:

“Implementation of the deal is expected to begin in the coming days and will involve transitioning Yahoo!’s algorithmic and paid search platforms to Microsoft, with Yahoo! becoming the exclusive relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers globally. Once the transition is completed, the companies’ unified search marketplace will deliver improved innovation for consumers, better volume and efficiency for advertisers and better monetization opportunities for web publishers through a platform that contains a larger pool of search queries.”

Advertising for both companies will be managed by Microsoft’s adCenter platform (meaning the closure of Yahoo Search Marketing) and prices for all search ads will be set by AdCenter’s automated auction process.

According to a memo sent to all Yahoo advertisers today:

• Yahoo Search Marketing advertisers will log into one place – Microsoft’s adCenter – to manage campaigns, for greater efficiency and a better ROI.
• Yahoo is hoping to transition advertisers and partners in the U.S. prior to October 2010, but may wait until 2011 for efficiency reasons.
• Advertisers will reach users on Yahoo! and Microsoft sites as well as other premium partner sites, with a single buy on adCenter.
• Yahoo will give Search Marketing advertisers 3 months warning of any changes to take place.

The two search giants have created a web site dedicated to the partnership and Yahoo has implemented a Transition Center for advertisers.

What does it mean for the search industry? To use a silly dinosaur analogy, (because who doesn’t like those?), it means that Bing the Triceratops and Yahoo the Brontosaurus have just combined to become an aggressive Tyrannosaurus Rex that’s going on a hunt for the Google Gigantosaurus.

Should be quite a spectacle.

How Google Helped Haiti

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

No doubt you’ve heard by now of the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti this week.

If you’ve visited Google.com since then you’ll see they’ve given up some home page real estate to highlight the tragic event. The home page now features the following sentence:

“Information, resources, and ways you can help survivors of the Haiti earthquake.”

The sentence links to an information page about how the public can help disaster relief in Haiti, complete with donate buttons for UNICEF and CARE, processed by Google checkout.

As well as using their popularity to spread the word, Google has announced they will be donating $1 million to the relief fund.

Not to be outdone, Yahoo and Bing also feature Haiti on their home pages. Yahoo highlights an article about texting to support Haiti as their lead story and also includes a small link for donation options. Bing features two small links labeled “How you can help Haiti” and “Get the latest earthquake news” below the fold, at the very bottom of the page.

If you want to donate to Haiti disaster relief, you can visit the Google link above or contact one of the many charitable organizations in the region directly.

Forget Yahoo and Bing, Google Now Targeting Apple

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

Google’s worst-kept secret phone finally launched yesterday.

Despite the fact that details about the phone have been leaked all over the web for months, the Nexus One was officially revealed at a good old fashioned press conference at Google headquarters in Mountain View.

Yahoo Highlights Search Trends for 2009

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

Today Yahoo launched its 2009 Year in Review which features the top trends and web searches made on Yahoo for 2009.

Categories included in the Year in Review include:

• Top 10 Searches e.g. Twilight
• Farewells e.g. Michael Jackson
• Sudden Fame e.g. Susan Boyle
• Mad Science e.g. Hubble Telescope
• Obama in the House e.g. Health Care Plan
• Market Darlings e.g. Twitter
• Financial Hangovers e.g. Stimulus Plan
• Bloggers Roll e.g. Huffington Post

Each category features a Top 10 list of the most popular searches queries for that topic. Search query trends were measured by various factors, including total volume and growth versus previous periods.

Yahoo has also created a competition for the Year in Review called Your Moments, where you are invited to share your meaningful moments of 2009 via Twitter using the hashtag #myyearyahoo.

So what were the top ten most popular searches on Yahoo in 2009?

1. Michael Jackson
2. Twilight
3. WWE
4. Megan Fox
5. Britney Spears
6. Naruto
7. American Idol
8. Kim Kardashian
9. NASCAR
10. Runescape

After 4 years in the #1 spot, Britney Spears moved down to the #5 position. However, the majority of top 10 search queries still relate to the entertainment industry, suggesting that we consistently like to escape from reality. Sad but true.

What were your memorable moments of 2009? Please add your comments below.

A Comparison of Paid Search Advertising Models

By Bill Platt in Featured

As webmasters, we are all chasing customers. We are looking for human visitors to come to our websites and to buy what we are selling.

To serve our needs for targeted traffic — potential customers — the search companies have begun to offer us a share of their significant traffic through many paid advertising methods.

The most common advertising offer at the search engines is the PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising model. There are also other search advertising models such as CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) and Featured Listings.

In this article, we will look at the advantages and disadvantages of each advertising method.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertising Model

By far, PPC is currently the most popular advertising model. From the buyer’s perspective, it is usually the most expensive type of advertising and the one that generates the most fear of fraud. In fact, many experts suggest that click-fraud might be as high as 20 to 25% of all click-traffic.

Pay-Per-Click is exactly what it sounds like. The advertiser bids on keywords and tells the advertising company that they will pay X number of cents or dollars for every click that they receive to their website through the PPC-provider’s website.

Advertisers compete for position within the search results with the highest bidder getting the best advertising spot at the top of the results. The second highest bidder gets the #2 spot, etc.

Generally, Pay-Per-Click providers serve three listings on the first page of search results. Only when there is strong competition for a particular keyword term and a number of advertisers vying for placement, will the PPC-provider show results with more than three advertisers.

If you bid the minimum five cents per click (the standard for most PPC systems), then it is possible that you might not see your listing on page one or page two of the search results. Let’s face it; PPC providers are interested in making the most money they can from the traffic they send to people. So, if one advertiser is paying a dollar per click and you are only bidding five cents a click, who do you think will receive the best placement? Yep, the one-dollar per click advertiser will get the most attention and the best placement, even if it requires pushing your placement back to page three of the search results.

The top two PPC-providers are:

http://adwords.google.com/

http://www.content.overture.com/d/ – Now owned by Yahoo!

Other not-so-well-known providers of PPC traffic, in alphabetical order, include:

http://www.411web.com/

http://www.7search.com/

http://www.abcsearch.com/

http://www.adbrite.com/

http://www.ask.com/

http://www.brainfox.com/

http://www.enhance.com/

http://www.kanoodle.com/

http://search.looksmart.com/

http://www.lycos.com/

http://www.miva.com/ – Formerly FindWhat.com

http://www.search123.com/

http://www.searchfeed.com/

http://turbo10.com/

The biggest advantage to these systems is that they serve large pools of consumers online, and they let you target specific search keywords.

The disadvantages are numerous. Those most often cited include: the high cost of bids for certain keywords, poor conversion rates on purchased clicks, and click fraud (generally regarded as people clicking your link just so they can get paid for it).

Personally, I have paid as high as a dollar per-click for a service that sells for $35, and $20 in volume. I have spoken to others who operate for-profit websites and have paid as much as $2.50 per click on an average keyword. In some really competitive markets, people pay as much as $30 per click.

If you use the Web-Professor bid tool to check keywords at Overture ( http://web-professor.net/tools/bidstats/ ) and you type in the keyword “mesothelioma”, you’ll find 30 bidders vying for that term and a maximum bid of $29.88 per click! If the maximum bidder converts traffic to sales at the national average of 3%, then he or she is paying an average of $900 to get one client! Insane, but true.

CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) Advertising Model

CPM advertising is most often associated with banner advertising, but can now be purchased for text ads as well. This type of advertising is available from many sources, including:

http://adwords.google.com/

http://www.realtechnetwork.com/

http://www.joetec.net/

CPM advertising can be cheaper than PPC, but it fails to address the effectiveness of your advertising copy. Before undertaking a large CPM campaign, you need to be confident your advertising copy will deliver results.

As with any other type of advertising, you need to track click- through and conversion rates to determine the advertising copy that is most effective for your business.

You also need to have a solid understanding of how many impressions it will take to generate a visitor, and how many visitors you will need to generate one sale. And, on the backside, you will need to know what the average earnings from your sales will be. With these stats in hand, you’ll know how much you can afford to pay for CPM advertising or any other type of advertising.

Using Google Adwords, you can buy CPM advertising for as little as $2 per thousand impressions. The one time I went that route, thinking my advertising might be cheaper, I ended up dropping $180 in three days with only one sale to show for my investment – — utilizing the exact same ad that generated a 4% click-through rate (CTR) in Google’s PPC advertising system.

The major appeal of CPM advertising is its perceived low-cost, with rates ranging between $2 – $3 per thousand impressions.

The major disadvantage to this type of advertising is that you need a good handle on how well your advertising is performing. Your advertising copy can make or break you. Additionally, you need to keep an eye on your advertising budget. From first hand experience, I can tell you that although CPM advertising can appear inexpensive, it can in short order surpass the costs of PPC advertising.

Featured Listing Advertising Model

Featured listings differ from the other two advertising models in that you do not pay for “ad clicks” or “ad impressions”. With featured listings, your advertisement appears in the purchased location for 30 days, 90 days, or one year.

Featured listings can be bought on individual websites and even on networks of websites. Below are a few examples of advertising networks that offer featured listings:

Geek Files ( http://www.geekfiles.com/advertising/ )

Geek Files offers various Featured Listing placement options with ad rates ranging from $19 to $179 per month. You get two months free if you buy advertising for a full year.

Aardvark Travel ( http://www.aardvarktravel.net/featured/ )

Aardvark Travel is a travel search engine. Featured listings appear in a colored box between the top five listings and the bottom five listings in the travel-related search results. There is a $50 setup fee for each Featured Listing and a $10 per month recurring charge for as long as you keep your listing active. Aardvark claims featured listings generate 40 times more clicks than any other listings on their pages.

The Independent Search Engine and Directory Network ( http://www.isedn.org/ )

The ISEDN offers a program that allows you to purchase Top Ten exposure for your website(s) across their network of 200 plus member websites.

The network is comprised of specialized search engines, search directories, and article directories. Featured Listing placements for specific keywords are displayed across the entire ISEDN system.

The cost of a keyword term (the word or phrase associated with the listing) is $12 for three months or $36 for 12 months. The price drops for each additional 5 listings you purchase. If you are buying in volume, discounts can be significant. For example, the cost for 16 to 100 listings is $6 per listing for 3 months and $18 per listing for 12 months.

The main drawback to the ISEDN program is that the network, although large, does not yet have the traffic volume of the major engines.

The major benefit, of course, is that you can buy a lot more bang for your advertising dollars. Additionally, you can see your ads appearing on pages in a position that will attract more attention and click-through traffic to your website.

Which Advertising Model Is Right For You?

It really depends on your business model. More so, it depends on your absolute click-through averages and your website conversion rates.

Your advertising needs to cost you no more than what it earns for you. Ideally, your advertising will cost less than it earns for you.

Some businesses trade on the lifetime value of customers and are willing to pay more to get customers than what they earn on their first sale, but not all of us can afford to build a customer base in the same way that Amazon built theirs.

If your advertising budget is small, your goal should be to make every advertising dollar count. Grow your business to the point where you might be able to afford some of the more expensive advertising solutions. But then, if the lower-cost solutions generate sales for you, why would you want to pay more?

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Bill Platt has owned and operated http://thePhantomWriters.com/ since 2001. If you would like to learn more about his article distribution service, visit his website. To read 100′s of Bill’s Tweet-sized tips for article marketing, SEO, and more, visit: http://thePhantomWriters.com/tips/index.php Bill is also active on Twitter @contentmanager

Clouds Hang Over Yahoo and Carol Bartz

By John Sylvester in Featured

In June this year, Yahoo’s CEO Carol Bartz said the company sold its search business to Microsoft because, according to a New York Times report, “Yahoo could no longer continue to match the level of investment Google and Microsoft were making in searching”, and instead has plans to invest in the company’s display ad, content and mobile services technologies.

However, it is now praying for deliverance from the Justice Department that antitrust regulators approve the deal. There are also reports that the company’s executives are offloading their shares at a time when confidence in the company needs to be bolstered. But the big question is, what would happen to Yahoo if the deal were to be scotched?

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