Archive of Search Engine Advertising Posts

Earlier this week a prospect called KoMarketing Associates. They were frustrated that they could not find a search engine marketing firm interested in their small business. They could not understand why so many companies had no interest helping a new company get their SEM strategy started.

When I explained to the caller that KoMarketing Associates works primarily with B2B companies and organizations, I was met with the following reply:  ... Read the full post

I’ve found that once people have determined what their ideal campaign settings are for a particular client they usually go into set it and forget it mode.  I’m going to go into detail about how we can use one specific section to get a little bit more out of our campaign settings.

Giving National Campaigns a Local Flavor

Normally when choosing to serve ads to the United States you’d simply pick the United States bundle under the Locations and Languages tab in the campaign settings.  Instead, try manually choosing each state from the list one by one.  ... Read the full post

It’s important to differentiate between a time-saving shortcut and one that has some serious drawbacks to the quality of your work or your relationship with your advertiser.

Here are a few “shortcuts” that I’ve found are important to avoid:

Failing to Use a Unique Login (Or Your Master Client Center) To Access the Account

The first thing you should do when you build an account for an advertiser or take over as the primary manager of an existing account is to associate a unique user name to all of your interactions.  This is important for several reason:  ... Read the full post

A common question about keyword research and the Google keyword tool is whether to ignore keyword opportunities that list “not enough data” for global and local search volume estimates.

The answer is NO; the misconception is that “not enough data” means “no one is searching for this keyword”, which in many cases will be far from the truth.  ... Read the full post

The fact that you can apply geographic constraints to more accurately target searchers in a specific region makes PPC an obvious partner for a local search strategy. Here the term ‘local’ is defined purely as the area in which an advertiser operates business.  For a scrap metal recycling firm in Springfield, Massachusetts local may be defined as Hampden county, a the entire state of Massachusetts, or a certain area radius where the operation, transportation, and labor costs are low enough for the transaction to be profitable.  ... Read the full post

As should be the case this time of year, many online marketing sites are publishing their list of the best posts for 2009. Here is a round up of these “Best of 2009″ posts, organized by Internet Marketing theme.

There is a lot of great information, concepts and writing to read through. If I’ve missed your list, please feel free to send me a message directly or through the comments below. Happy New Year and wishing everyone the best in 2010 and beyond!

Internet Marketing  ... Read the full post

On Sep 30, 2009 Google announced a new AdWords reporting feature that measures conversions for display ads in the Content Network (display ads are image-based or rich media ads only – not text ads).

When I first saw this I was excited because it provides an extra level of measurement that was missing.

Many ad networks have had this metric available to advertisers for some time.  ... Read the full post

Guest Author

CJ Boguszewski Chief Marketing Officer, Hiconversion Twitter: @CJBogus

SEO vs. Conversion Rate Debate Shouldn’t Exist — Three Reasons CRO Complements SEO & SEM

Rand Fishkin, whose SEOmoz.org blog frequently has industry-leading commentary on a wide variety of optimization topics, entitled a post in January 2006 “SEO versus Conversion Rate Debate Shouldn’t Exist.”

In October 2009, the debate is still ongoing.

While the Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) discipline continues to mature alongside the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) categories, most eBusiness organizations frame their understanding of CRO in SEO/SEM terms.  ... Read the full post

The news that Microsoft and Yahoo will partner in search presents opportunities and challenges for search engine marketers. If you’re not familiar with the deal, in-depth coverage can be found on Search Engine Land, TechCrunch and the recently launched Microsoft/Yahoo news site.  ... Read the full post

Over the past year or so I have written roughly 30 blog posts.  Some have been better-written than others, and some have had more value than others (that’s blogging for you!).

There are some posts that I have written that I wish had received more exposure than they did.  I might have published them on a day of the week, or time of day, that was not optimal.  The titles of the posts might not have been as compelling as they could have been.  The right people in KoMarketing’s social networks might have seen them.  There are many reasons why the posts did not see the readership that I think they deserve.  ... Read the full post