Tag Archives: search engine marketing

Click Fraud is on the rise.

Posted on by

 Recently The Click Fraud Index run by Click Forensics  showed that click fraud rate was on the rise. What you will find interesting about these numbers are

Key findings from data reported for Q3 2007 include:

  • The overall industry average click fraud rate was 16.2 percent for Q3 2007. This is an increase from 13.8 percent for the same quarter in 2006 and from 15.8 percent for Q2 2007.

cfq.jpg

  • The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 28.1 percent in Q3 2007. That’s up from 25.6 percent for Q2 2007, 21.9 percent for Q1 2007 and 19.2 percent for Q4 of 2006.
  • Over 60 percent of traffic from parked domains and made for ad sites was click fraud
  • In Q3 2007, the greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside North America came from France (4.2 percent) China (4.1 percent) and Germany (3.7 percent

Publishers and advertisers have recently felt the impact click fraud is having in the content networks. Increasingly, publishers are seeing a performance drop in the content network traffic quality. Advertisers are seeing their conversion rates drop significantly on content networks because of bad traffic coming from parked domains and other low quality sources.

“Click fraud activity continues to grow especially on made for ad sites, parked domains and on the content networks,” said Tom Cuthbert, president and CEO of Click Forensics. “Advertisers, publishers and search engines need to take notice because content networks are becoming the fastest growing source of click fraud. Ensuring their quality is essential for the pay per click advertising market to continue its growth

Are your websites optimized for Google’s Universal Search?

Posted on by

Google is changing the way we all view search.  Back in May, it introduced a “Universal Search” system that  blends listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines among those it gathers from crawling web pages.

The move potentially should be a huge boon for searchers, while search marketers who have paid attention to the importance of specialized or vertical search will see new opportunities.

But it has now become more imperative to include video, images, news articles and other content that search engines will want to crawl. Because of this search engine marketers are going to now add this to the mix of “things to do” in order to rank well in Google’s SERPS.

Where this is all going is towards a more vertical type of search result. By being more vertical, the result is more targeted.  The end result is a blend of everything in one column, hence better and more relevance.

Because of this change in a more targeted approach to search results, it means that you as a web afficionado, better have more quality content on your site. The better your content, the more of it that which will be pushed up. By better I mean variety as well.

Google’s ultimate vision for universal search is to search across all its content sources, then comapre and rank all the information in real time, and then deliver a single integrated set of precise and personalized search results.

So when designing a page, or a site, as your goal once was to be in the top 3 on the first page, it’s now important to be on the first page. Why? Because you are now competing with images, videos, blogs, and new results in the organic listings. So the more eye catching your graphics are that appear in the results on the first page, the better your chance of being clicked on, even if your not in the top 3. So the more diverse your site is in it’s approach to content, the better your chances.

So how prepared are you?

If Google went away, would you care?

Posted on by

How would Google impact your life if by happenstance, they just,”went away”? As a casual user of the web, I would think that you wouldn’t miss a beat, you’d just migrate over to Yahoo or MSN or one of the hundreds or thousands of other second tier search engines out there. Would your results suck? Would they be tainted by gross inacurracies? I’m sorry to say, and it probably pains Google to hear this (not really) but the answer is more than likely, no and no.

You see, the other search engines are not that bad, in fact Ask.com for instance, is really really good. But when you are trying to compete against this Goliath of a company, you’re little pebbles will have no noticeable effect or impact, no matter how cool and powerful.

I imagine that if Google went away, their 10,674 employees would have to find new jobs doing something that we have no clue about. Since they are so secretive anyways… Then there are the tens of thousands of people that make money on Adsense. What would they do? Arghhhh!!!! Get real jobs?  I suppose they might go back to that fine affiliate marketing model that was and is still so annoying. Here’s a thought. Maybe the CTR on banners would go north of 1% if Google went away?

SEO and SEM professionals would naturally just shift their attention in the forums and their blogs to bitching about Yahoo and MSN’s “Algo” and why it’s so unfair, and why they never get back to you, and why they never give you a straight answer, and why you need to do it “this way”.  They also would be lost without having a Google toolbar that gave them their PR’s; Oh and Matt Cutts, the Google Guru, would probably be an authority on something, but it just won’t be in search.

Would there be less web sites if Google wasn’t around? What would be the ideal business model for making money on the web? Yahoo would own PPC outright at this point so what would they do differently if Google wasn’t around?

Would MSN be even more formidable if Google wasn’t around? Since Google has come on the scene, casual water cooler talk has shifted from, “I wonder what Microsoft will release next”? to “Did you see where Google’s stock is at”?

Are we better off socially because Google is so entrenched into our daily lives? Do they make us better at what we do? Do they solve nagging problems that previously existed before they came on the scene? Do they have our best interests at heart? Does Google care about you and I?

What do you think life would be like without Google? Does Google impact your life?

SEO Forums. It’s like a Jungle Out there…

Posted on by

It’s like a jungle out there it makes me wonder, how I keep from going under …

So in the search results I found pages and pages of results for seo forums. Places where I can go and share and learn SEO/SEM information. In a fit of,”what was I thinking”, I decided to step out of the comfy confines of my home base. The site where I feel most at ease. (time for the shameless  plug V7N)

I went into another forum which will go nameless, where it seemed to be rich with information and content and contributors. I started to post a few comments to impress the readers with my knowledge and began to notice something. Unlike the group/forum that I was accustomed to, the sharing and aknowledging of information in this forum was somewhat different.

It was less about the topic and more about bashing the poster for their ignorance. More about attacking and shaming. One person in particular who had posted over 6,000 comments was particularly bad. In my mind, all I could think of was the drunk stepfather, who was passed out, and the rest of the family tip-toed around in fear of awaking him. For if he awoke, he’d get his belt and beat anything that moved for no reason. I felt I had been virtually beaten with a belt by Mister 6,000 Posts because I dared question his authority. Guess I was letting my freak flag fly…

This is how I felt when I had crossed the evil poster. I quickly developed a complex and had immediately felt the need to lash out. To fight back. To tell him where he can stick it. This never works in these situations because, it’s a computer people. If you have a problem, just exit, just walk away, turn it off, and walk away. Never go back. But I wanted to kick his ass.  See—>Me (in my mind) beating someone up and saving the world from the evil computer genius with the large ears…and droopy eyelids

Easier said than done. I tried to think of something to fire back at him but figured, what’s the point, he’ll just say something even more hurtful, and then what have I accomplished? Nothing.  The best I might be able to say is, “I know you are, but what am I”?

In the end I realized there is a reason that some people are called lurkers and there is a reason that some people hide behind computers. Both for different but similar reasons. The former because they got abused by the latter and the latter because they have some serious socialization issues that they choose not to deal with. The rest of us? We are in the middle.

If that’s the way it has to be, then I’m just going to head back to the people that I know. No matter  how messed up my group is, my forum works for me, it’s my niche. I think we all just need our niche, where we feel comfortable. When we go check out the other sites, other groups etc., where we venture where we’ve never been, it’s foreign and there are certain ways to do certain things. You better be prepared for how they operate and how things “work”. Because the warm and fuzzy greeting and the open arm invitation is not what you will get. Or maybe just a matter of identifying who the a@!#’s are and thats it, you avoid them.

Building a website? Don’t forget about the user!

Posted on by

In the golden age of SEO and SEM often websites are built with the search engines in mind. This is not necessarily a bad thing its just that sometimes one of the key elements is forgotten. The user. The person who brings revenue and eyeballs to your site in the first place.

We know that content is king, always has and always will be. We also know that content is one of the keys to a search engine friendly site. But when the content does not speak to the user and is geared more towards the SE’s. Then we have a problem. As a Search engine marketer, you have to be intrinsically aware of what you are trying to achieve.  Simply put, you want…web nirvana. That happy place where you have achieved the goal of creating a search engine friendly site with a user friendly design.

It can be done, but remember that it has to be built from the inside out. That means your pages have to have ample room for content. Sure Flash is cool but really, what does flash do for a site? It makes it sexy and it’s visually appealing but the SE’s are not too wild about it. But… “What about my user? They like it!” And there my friend is the Catch-22. What’s good for the user is not necessarily good for the search engines. Thus the thinking that has to go into any and all web deployments. You have to straddle the beam like an olympian. Balancing between the users needs and expectations and the SE’s criteria.

Keep the flash to a minimum if you must use it, and spare the flash/splash as some organizations are wont to do. I would say that most users skip the intro anyway. Once you get past the flash, crank copy that you as a user would want to read and that is relevent to the site. After a rough draft, you can then go back and possibly tweak with some of your key words.

After you have crafted the content, then you can work on the structure, site maps, alt tags, metas and linking, all which speak to the SE’s and really won’t affect the user too much. Lastly once you have the site done, go back and see if it flows; and if you the user think the content is relevent to you, the user! While you’re at it, I would highly recommend one of the few Naples based seo companies

Search engine Algos’ change quicker than a stoplight.

Posted on by

As an SEO/SEM expert like me can attest, one of the first things we do in the morning is to check the natural rankings of all the sites they work on. Why? Because as much as they know what the the “Big Three”( For those uninitiated-Google, Yahoo and MSN) require, want and need for optimal organic rankings, they still are not quite sure where the respective sites that they’re working on, are going to end up ranked each morning.

Part of this can certainly be attributed to each SE marketers’s belief in what they do, is what is needed. But the other part is that because search is so ingrained in what we do and is so profitable to each of the SE’s, they, the SE’s, constantly tweak and adjust and change alltogether their Algo.  They then look up out of the huddle to see what the other team is doing. Remember when you were a kid, or maybe you still are, and each team huddled up. Most huddled up, but some of us always looked up to maybe catch a glimpse of what the other team was getting ready to do?

The same thing goes on daily, hourly, weekly, in the SE wars. Why? Because search is so important in our daily lives and is so lucrative. Google is not the behemoth that they are because of all the tools they’ve rolled out over the last 3-4 years. It’s their core business of search. They do it well, they’ve done it best  and they are completely branded and part of our culture. few have done it so well.

Think about like this. How many companies have become a verb. I.e. “I Googled Tim and found out that he is actually a multi-millionaire…. ”

I remember when Google launched and the first thing I thought was, a) what a cool name, and b) what a light and simple landing page. But that was the beauty of the user interface. Almost like walking into a club with a simple facade. Doesn’t seem like much until they let you in the front door, and as soon as you get in, you look around and say., “My goodness, I had no idea”. The same thing holds true with Google. Who Knew?

It used to be that Microsoft was the big dog on the block. Well for those living under a rock. It’s Google now. And because Google calls the shots in regards to Search they can also redefine the search algoritham, and by doing that, they force the other 2 to do the same. Do you see where I’m going. By changing or tweaking, they force the others to do the same.

It’s the essence of competition. In order to be the best, you can’t stand pat, you have to continue to prove why you are the best, you have to be different but you always have to do it better. You are always scruitinzed and you’re always held to a high standard and expectation. So far Google has done that, but it sure can be frustrating to the  Naples Based Search engine marketers who are trying to figure out, just what are they doing over there in the huddle.