april 2008

This post is from from my other blog here

Direct from the YAHOO! Search Marketing BLOG:Minimum Bids No Longer Fixed at $.10How to manage your new Sponsored Search minimum bidsStarting today, minimum bids for some Sponsored Search keywords will no longer be fixed at $.10. Throughout the next week, you may start noticing new minimum bids on some of your keywords. Your new minimum bids can be lower or higher than $.10. Content Match minimum bids currently will remain at $.10. We’ll notify you in the account interface when the status of any of your keywords is affected.How Your Bids WorkThe new minimum bids are a little bit like auction house reserve prices, and can be based on multiple factors, such as your keyword quality and the keyword’s value—or how much we think that keyword is worth. Here’s a look at the two main factors:Quality—High quality generally means that your ads are being clicked more often, relative to your competitors. We try to reward quality with higher rankings and lower costs, and now, potentially, with lower minimum bids.Value—We look at a number of things to determine what a keyword is worth: for example, how many advertisers are bidding on your keyword, and what they’re willing to pay for it.A keyword term becomes “active”— or eligible for display—when your bid is equal to or greater than your minimum bid. Keywords become inactive when your bid falls below your minimum. You will be notified in an alert on your Account Dashboard if the minimum bid for a keyword increases above your current bid, and you’ll have a grace period of up to several days to raise your bid to keep your keyword active.I am curious to see how these changes impact my Yahoo! account. My CpC's are generally 20% higher than what I get in Google.

This post is from from my other blog here

As a small SEM company (www.boomCLICKS.com) I come across a number of potential clients who have been pitched by the YellowPages. The YellowPages offers clients a HUGE ad in the phone book and paid search clicks. The cost of the clicks is often $4 per click and does not send the Internet searcher to the client’s site, but to a YellowPages portal. This causes the searcher to have to make even more clicks to find out more about the business. The fewer clicks a potential customer has to make, the better chance of converting them into a paying customer.Going back to the “portal” site that YellowPages is using….The use the OnYPC Business Directory page to pull in the info for the paid search accounts. An example of a client pagehttp://www.onypc.com/ask-gary-kythen just take a look at the “main page” of the sitehttp://www.onypc.comand you can see ALL of the keywords they are using for each client in the paid search campaigns….who needs SpyFu. ;-)The use of this portal does not allow the clients to establish their brand at all. The urls used in the Google ads must use the onypc.com and not the url of the client.Even the client website urls used on the portal pages are sent to localtraff.com and then redirected.The amount of money that the YellowPages is changing their clients for paid search is very high. Poor word selection, no link benefits, and an inflated cost.If you are using YellowPages to manage your paid search...contact boomCLICKS.com for a free consultation and a special no-risk trial offer.

This post is from from my other blog here

Yahoo! and Click Forensics have done a deal....From the article:Yahoo! blog

This post is from from my other blog here

Having taken over quite a few paid search accounts that have been poorly run, I have noticed that quite a few have the same mistakes.1. Your display URL does not have to match your destination URLI have seen people use Http:// in their display URL. You don’t need that, or even www. If you have site with a long domain name, just drop the www. For example, Buy Sports Videogames uses BuySportsVideogames.com in their ads. A special offer page can be promoted through the display URL. For example, Buy Sports Videogames offers Nintendo Wii consoles and use BuySportsVideogames.com/Wii. This allows me to get even more words in my ad bolded for certain searches.2. This Mistake Features FREE SHIPPING For highly competitive terms you need something to set you apart. If your site offers free shipping or a low price, state it in the ad. The more you can say in the ad that sets you apart from everyone else the better chance you have at converting. Even putting “in-stock” in the ads can help you sell hard to find products.3. Use Keywords Insertion ProperlyIf you are using keyword insertion, be sure to use it properly. If your ad text needs to be capitalized, and you are using it within the brackets, you will need to follow the following steps to get it to show up properly. I saw the NHL have an ad that was using keyword insertion that failed to follow these guidelines.For more information and a FREE CONSULTATION please call me @ 919.647.4453