Monday, October 13, 2008

Best of 2008 (So Far) - Search Engine Marketing, Part 2

How can you use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising intelligence to improve organic SEO? Where should you apply direct marketing methods to your website? What challenges lie ahead for PPC marketers? How can "conquesting" be applied as an SEM tactic? What critical intelligence can be gained from PPC analytics?

Get the answers to these inquiries and more in the following blog posts and articles, some of the best written on the topic of search engine marketing so far in 2008.

5 Keyword Strategies for B2B PPC Campaigns by High Rankings Advisor

Andy Komack offers five valuable, practical tips for improving web marketing results, such as "Users Do Not Search for 'Solutions'" (so true!) and "Apply Your PPC Intelligence to SEO." This is a relatively quick but highly worthwhile read.


Cookies, Milk & Kramer: Converting Visitors Into Buyers @ SES by aimClear Blog

Charlene Jaszewski, self-described "Internet Consultant and Word Wrangler Extraordinaire," provides an excellent and detailed summary of presentations by Mike Moran, author of Do It Wrong Quickly; Michael Sack of Idearc Media Corp.; and Howard Kaplan, COO of Future Now. I particularly like this piece from Moran: "What can I change on my site to improve conversions? Answer: everything, and right now...Most of what we do is wrong. Everything we do is an experiment. Let the market tell you what works and what doesn’t. Tweak something every day. See how it performs. If it works, keep it. If it doesn’t, change it again."


Challenges of Paid Search Marketing in 2008 by PPC Blog

PPC guru Gordon Choi outlines the challenges that pay-per-click advertisers will face as this space becomes more competitive, and provides strategies for addressing these challenges, including how to structure and retain PPC staff, monitor click fraud and write more effective ads.


Using PPC for Conquesting Your Competitor’s Brand Keywords by Search Marketing Sage

As Tad Miller explains, "'Conquesting,' as used in the Advertising Industry, is a means to deploy an advertisement for one’s products or services adjacent to editorial content relating to the competitor or the competitors’ products. In the online world it usually means bidding on your competitor’s 'brand' keywords on a Pay Per Click Advertising platform." As a PPC tactic, it tends to have a high cost but also a high value per conversion. His post outlines five challenges of keyword conquesting along with six solutions to those challenges.


2 Major Reasons Why You Should Run a Search Query Report Today! by PPC Hero

This post shows how to use the Google AdWords Search Query Performance Report to generate new keyword ideas as well as to identify negative keywords for exclusion from your campaigns.


Marketing lessons learned form pay-per-click analytics by John W Ellis

How PPC analytics take the guesswork out of marketing, providing precise, quantitative feedback on elements like ad messages, geo-targeting and keyword selection.


Essential metrics in paid-keyword campaigns by DMNews

Olivier Silvestre provides guidance on optimizing landing pages, ad copy and keywords through the proper use of actionable SEM metrics.


Campaign Maintenance - Removing dead keywords by CDF Networks

A very brief post that doesn't say a whole lot but provides an important reminder: while it's important to experiment with new keywords to try to maximize campaign results, it's also critical to periodically prune unproductive keywords in order to maintain high quality scores.


The Great (And Completely Ridiculous) 'In-house vs. Outsourced SEM' Debate by MediaPost Search Insider

Dave Pasternack hammers home the value of using an outside specialist firm for search marketing by looking at the possible reasons some executives might still believe their in-house teams can do this just as well. There is no explanation, however, for the incredibly wrongheaded statement about SEO in the last paragraph; typo?


Yahoo Smart Start - A Handy Guide For Yahoo Advertisers by Google Analytics Blog

PPC specialist Katherine Anderson recommends the downloadable Yahoo Smart Start manual as both a valuable guide for beginners and reference for experienced search marketers, saying "the book reaches out well to its target audience and addresses common concerns of new and experienced advertisers in an easy and understandable way."

Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Search Engine Marketing, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Social Media Optimization, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Blogging for Business, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Web Marketing Research, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Website Design, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Link Building

*****

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