21.05.2009
Blog
Will 2009 be the rise of the digital age in Australia?
According to the survey conducted by the AIMIA (Australian Interactive Media Industry Association) it will be!
Below is a summary of key findings from their survey.
Key Findings:
- 54% of respondents expect to increase the portion of their total advertising spend that is allocated to digital
- Despite economic conditions, investment in digital marketing will increase, with the expectation that customer revenue and customer engagement will follow.
- Organisations continue to under-invest in digital marketing (ie. The rate of investment, and the rate of growth in investment in digital is not consistent with the expected commercial impact).
- Organisations expect to increase their digital marketing staff and outsourced digital service suppliers
- Change in the use of digital as a marketing medium within corporations and government agencies, showing that a shift away from traditional advertising and media will place digital as a core platform for customer engagement.
Source – AIMIA Digital Survey Index
06.05.2009
Blog
Last month Google released their Business Stimulus Package with $75.00 credit for the Google Adword marketing platform, this month Yahoo has entered with the Yahoo Big Bang promotion.
Yahoo is now offering 3 months or $150.oo in Yahoo Search Marketing credit. This provides another opportunity for business to enter the world of pay per click advertising.
For more detials about the Yahoo Big Bang promotion, check it out here
Related posts on Yahoo Search Marketing
29.04.2009
Blog
Google Australia is stepping up to help businesses break out of the doom and gloom of the current economic conditions.
Google is currently offering $75.00 in credit to all new Google Adword accounts that are opened. They are offering you a free consultation when opening your account and will guide you through the process.
Should You Try It?
Pay Per Click Advertising is a “love it” or “don’t understand how it works” thing. This offer from Google provides you the perfect opportunity to dip your feet in the online marketing ocean and learn how powerful this medium really is.
Take advantage of the Google Business Stimulus Package offer, go get it here.
17.04.2009
Blog
Do you sometimes feel like Google is punishing you with a high cost per click (CPC)? Well the chances are you are letting them.
If you want to reduce your CPC, you should pay some serious attention to the Google Quality Score; this is one aspect that can impede you. There is something you can do about it….it is called content.
Content Is Still King
Content is king in the world of PPC! You need to add the right content to your site and give your site more depth to give Google the impression that your website is legitimate and worthy of a great Quality Score.
3 Content Strategies To Improve Your Quality Score
How To Add Content Quickly & Easily!
Strategy 1 - Privacy Policy
Adding a privacy policy to your site is quick and easy way to increase trust from Google. It does not have to be a perfect legally binding policy, all you need to do is link to it from down in the footer of every page with the anchor text, “Privacy Policy”.
Strategy 2 - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
FAQ pages are another way that you can add some depth to your site to please the Quality Score demons. You may find that your conversion rate will increase with a well constructed FAQ page as an added bonus. Take some time, do the research into your market and really provide some quality answers to questions that your potential customers might have.
Strategy 3 - Blogs
Blogs are magic for improving your Quality Score and they provide you an easy way to add content to your site. If you don’t have a blog on your site yet, you really are at a disadvantage on many different levels.
What Content Do I Need To Lower My Quality Score?
Ask Google using the Google External Keyword Tool.
Note: this is slightly different to the keyword tool you would use inside Adwords, you may need to open the link in a browser that you would not use when logging into the Adwords system.
Select the “Website Content” option on the left and add the url of your site. Google will give you a selection of keywords that they think are relevant to your page/site. I recommend exporting the result to a csv file (for excel) and then go to work filtering through picking out the high search volume and or more relevant keywords to your project. When you have your list of keywords and phrases, it is time to add content to your site based on your list.
Where Do I Get Content From?
If you can not want to write your own content, don’t panic just yet, there is hope. The internet is full of content for you to use on your blog, search the sites listed below using your list as the search terms. When you find something that is relevant, copy and paste it into your blog and you are done.
Article Sources
Go Articles - http://www.goarticles.com/
Easy Articles - http://www.easyarticles.com/
Article Cube - http://www.articlecube.com/
Article Alley - http://www.articlealley.com/
Ezine Articles - http://www.ezinearticles.com/
PRLog - http://www.prlog.org/
Free Press Releases - http://www.free-press-release.com/
The Free Library - http://www.thefreelibrary.com/
Article City - http://www.articlecity.com/
PRnine - http://www.articlecity.com/
wikiHow - http://www.wikihow.com
Video Sources
Google Video Search - http://video.google.com.au/
Yahoo Video Search - http://au.video.search.yahoo.com/
Expert Village - http://www.expertvillage.com/
MetaCafe - http://www.metacafe.com/
Now you should have plenty of relevant articles and videos on your site to help improve your Quality Score, lower your CPC and improve your return on pay per click advertising investment! 
4 Tips To Improve Your Yahoo Quality Score
What are your strategies for improving quality score?
17.04.2009
Blog
Google recently launched the expansion of local search, now they are unrolling sitelinks in the search results beyond the number 1 position.
What Are Sitelinks?
Sitelinks show up underneath the first search result and which lead to specific pages deeper within the site. Sitelinks enable users to jump directly to important parts of a site, which is often useful for large, complex websites. Sitelinks have the additional advantage of giving users an overview of a website’s content by highlighting some of the popular parts of the site.
Sitlelinks In The Future
A single row of links can now appear for results that didn’t show sitelinks before, even for results that aren’t in the first position. This means multiple results on one query can now have sitelinks. Up to four sitelinks can show up right above the page URL, instead of the usual two columns below the URL of the first result. Below is an example:
Sitelink Benefits
These one-line sitelinks have many of the same benefits as the full two-column sitelinks, but on a smaller scale: they show users some relevant sub-pages in the site and give an idea of what the site is about. Comparing the sitelinks that appear for each result can even illustrate the difference between the sites. Just like regular sitelinks, one-line sitelinks are generated algorithmically and the decisions on when to show them and which links to display are entirely based on the expected benefit to users.
Google expect this will increase the visibility of and traffic to your site, while also improving the experience of users. If, however, you absolutely would prefer not to have a particular sitelink show up, remember that you can always block a page from appearing as a sitelink for 90 days through Webmaster Tools.
source
12.04.2009
Blog
Many new pay per click advertisers think that ad quality has to do with keywords, when it’s actually about the ads themselves. If you want your ad quality scores to head north, focus on how your ads are written. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to ace the Yahoo test.
The write stuff
You may not be a writer by trade, but you are in business and you probably know your product better than anyone. The basic principle of marketing is to provide a product that fills a need. So focus on what makes you different from your competitors. What’s your secret weapon, your special sauce, your unique angle? It might not be the product, but the service you provide. Do you offer free shipping, great customer support or overnight delivery?
Put yourself in the shoes of your target customers and think about what their needs are—then write them down! Yahoos tips on writing strong ads, visit their Help Center.
What’s key
A short list of keywords for an ad group is usually better than a big, long list of anything-goes keywords. You don’t just want a bunch of traffic, you want quality traffic that can lead to conversions. Your keywords should always be relevant to their associated ads, and the best way to accomplish that is to create multiple ad groups with a small number of select keywords that are highly relevant to each other. The fewer keywords you have, the better chance you’ll have of identifying what’s working and what isn’t.
Putting keywords in their place
Research has long shown that including the user’s search term in your ad copy significantly increases the likelihood of a click, which obviously is the first step toward closing a sale. This is where our keyword insertion tool can help.
Many advertisers let this nifty little tool go unused because they think it’s complicated, but it’s actually quite easy to use. Keyword insertion can help reduce the number of ads you have to manage and increase the relevancy of ads by automatically including in your ad the keyword that matched the user’s search query. Thus, you don’t have to create an ad for every keyword—just let keyword insertion do the work for you.
We recommend that you use keyword insertion with your title rather than your description. The title is the first thing that users read (and sometimes the only thing). With just 40 characters in the title, it’s easier to make the title relevant to all of your keywords.
You can learn more about how to use keyword insertion in this section of the Yahoo Help Center.
Test time
When you create more than one ad within an ad group, you’re automatically setting up ad testing. This tool gives you insight into your ad’s performance and helps you identify the messages that drive the most potential customers to your site. Find out more about ad testing here.
article source - Yahoo Search Marketing Blog.
Is The Google Quality Score Robbing You?
- 3 Steps To Improving Your Google Quality Score
08.04.2009
Blog
Google has just finished the worldwide roll out of local map search results, the maps will on most occasions now appear even when you don’t type in your search location.
For example, in the past if you lived in Brisbane and searched for, “Brisbane Restaurants” you would have a list of result on the map and then the natural search results. Nnow if you search for, “restaurants” it is likely the map will appear with a list of restaurants from the Brisbane area. Google will use your IP address to guess your location, if you find it to be wrong, look for the change location link on the top right hand side of the map (map source - Google).
How Do Get Listed In Google Local Search Results?
The first thing you need to do is create yourself a business listing here - Google Local Business Center
There is no clear cut logic to what order Google will show your business in the top 10 local results, if at all. A great was to start is filling in all the required fields to list your business, insuring you use keyword phrases in the description and categories. You may also want to contemplate using keywords in your title, for example if you live Brisbane and sell Blue Widgets you could make the title,
“Brisbane Blue Widgets - Your Business Name“
The number reviews for your business also seems to help your display ranking, so now would be a good time to email your customers asking them to write a review. If you find you are not getting displayed in the local results, feel free to contact us for some advice.
What are your thoughts on the extra addition of local maps to general searches?
02.04.2009
Blog
Don’t Market Your Business Online In Australia!
Why would you? No one uses the internet down under………. right?
Well you might want to reconsider that statement.
According to a recent study conducted by market information group TNS, 79% of all Australians log on to the internet from home on a daily basis and spend 1/3 of their total leisure time online.
This puts Australians ahead of the UK and US who spend 28% and 30% of their leisure time online.
What are Australians doing online to take up so much of their leisure time?
According to AAPT research they are shopping. Nearly a quarter of all households are currently shopping online on a regular basis, spending up to one hour per day in front of the computer screen to make their purchases.
This trend can be attributed to greater access to fast broadband internet connections, high quality products on shopping sites and secure payment gateways.
One further interesting finding from the research is that the craving from metropolitan and regional households to shop online is equal.
Online marketing in Australia is a direction you should take now before you get left behind.
TNS research source
AAPT research source
31.03.2009
Blog
There is no doubt that search engine optimisation (SEO) is a ticket to a long and healthy life on the internet. The problem is everyone wants top search rankings and there is one evil that effects everyone from the the DIY SEO junkie to the $100,000+ per month SEO company – SPAMMERS.
Spammers affect every sector on the internet. The more prosperous your sector, the more you can expect a determined spammer to push into the top search rankings and take a piece of your pie. You will often notice these spam sites weasel their way into search results and wonder how they got above your site - they have irrelevant content (if any content at all) and no inbound links, to name but a few questionable aspects of their sites.
The truth is that as smart, effective and efficient as search engines are, they can not catch all the garbage sites on the internet these days.
So what can you do to beat them at their own game?
- Always follow best practice search engine optimisation techniques. Be active, be aggressive, think outside the box, but be ethical - it will help you sleep at night and will allow you to avoid being caught up in our next suggestion.
- Report the spam sites to Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live etc. While the search engines are doing everything they can to filter the wheat from the chaff, you can help make the internet experience a better place for everyone by reporting any spam.
Spam Report Links
Google - http://www.google.com/
Yahoo - http://add.yahoo.com/
MSN/Live - https://feedback.live.com
Happy SPAM Hunting!
18.03.2009
Blog
For sometime the Yahoo search marketing platform (pay per click advertising) has lacked the features of the Google Adword platform, is this Yahoo making a lunge for more market share?
The 3 Cool New Features To Yahoo Search Marketing (PPC)
- Demographic targeting
You can now select your desired audiences on Yahoo! sites — in both Sponsored Search and Content Match — by age and gender, and set a premium bid for those groups. With demographic targeting, you can take advantage of Yahoo!’s wide user base and its deep understanding of its audience. The demographic targeting uses a concept called bid adjustments, which let you set a premium bid for the categories that are worth more to you without losing other traffic volume.
- Ad scheduling
If the people you most want to reach are most likely to respond to your ad at certain times of the day, or your business is only open certain hours, you can select what time of day and day of the week you’d like your campaigns to run. You can schedule ads to be shown according to users’ time zones or according to your time zone. Ad scheduling works in both Sponsored Search and Content Match, and at the ad group and campaign levels.
- Enhanced ZIP-level geo-targeting
An update to the beta ZIP-level targeting feature, advertisers will have even more control about how geo-targeting is used. Available for both Sponsored Search and Content Match, you can mix and match geo-targeting settings at different levels within the same campaign or ad group. New dynamic mapping features help you select individual ZIP codes and ZIP codes surrounding them.
(source)
What Are Your Thoughts On The New Yahoo Features?
