MasterLink Internet Marketing

Coming to MasterLink this summer, the only thing I knew about Search Engine Optimization is that it impressed people to hear the title, even if they had no clue what it meant. Learning the ropes of SEO under Mark Barrera it all started to come together.

My first lesson was that companies do not pay for top rankings in Google, they had to earn them and that is what our job is as search engine marketers. My second lesson and maybe the most important was that SEO takes time. This is the first thing MasterLink tells their potential clients so they fully understand what to expect. This I have found to be true and backed by all the books I have read on the subject. My advice there would be to anyone working with a company who has given them false hope by telling them changes will happen instantly, we all know that Rome was not built in a day.

Another lesson I learned early on was that the industry is constantly changing. What is working for you today may not be the case tomorrow. Thus following changes in the industry from sites such as SearchEngineWatch is very necessary.

Something that caught me by surprise was that search engines such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo must know that your site exists. Meaning you can’t just slap your site up on the World Wide Web and have instant exposure to millions of people. What a sad and disillusioned soul I was, it’s pertinent that your page have quality site maps submitted to each search engine so they know exactly what you or your company is about.

The more tedious work involves pay per click campaigns. There is a lot going on and you must be at the top of your game to manage a successful PPC campaign. You have to look at many pieces such as conversion rates, click through ratios, impressions, and the average cost per click to inform you as to what you’re doing well and what you should do differently. This part of SEO is a little overwhelming when first introduced to, and time will make it easier, or at least I hope.

Aside from that SEO is overall a very fun and exciting industry to be a part of because it is constantly changing, never boring and always keeps you on your toes. Every day is different!

These are just a few of the many lessons I have learned during my short stint with MasterLink which goes to show that SEO is something that takes constant attention and top priority.

-Stuart Frazier
SEO Intern

Yahoo’s search marketing upgrade, code-named Project Panama, won’t arrive until at least the end of the year according to Yahoo Chairman and CEO, Terry Semel.

The upgrade is expected to bring Yahoo's pay per click model more in line with Google's. With Panama ads placement will be based on price and relevancy of ad. Currently, Yahoo places a paid ad solely based on the amount you are willing to pay for the keyword. The new algorithm will be similar to how Google AdWords works.

Yahoo had planned to release the upgrade in the third quarter, but Semel said during the company’s quarterly earnings call on Tuesday that the company was delaying the release of Panama to prevent disruption in ad purchasing and management during the holiday season.

"We think this is the right decision for ensuring the most successful commercial launch possible," he said, adding that we should expect to start using the upgrade in 2007.

Whatever kind of business you are in, success and profitability start with marketing. Driving interest in your products and / or services is the number one goal for any company.

E-mail marketing is one of the most basic and effective marketing tools available today. It's easy, affordable, direct, and powerful. When you add e-mail to your marketing plan, you spend less time, money and resources than with traditional marketing (ie: direct mail or print advertising). You can have your time-sensitive information sent in minutes, not days or weeks.
E-mail marketing also allows you to proactively communicate with both existing customers and prospects instead of quietly waiting for them to return to your website, visit your store or office, or call you on the phone.

E-mail marketing will also allow you to communicate more information, more often. Your communications can include newsletters, preferred customer promotions, sale notifications, new service announcements, event invitations, surveys and more.

With e-mail marketing you can see the results of your efforts instantly. The benefits obtained from most types of marketing and advertising are difficult to measure. With e-mail marketing, however, you can easily measure the number of e-mails delivered, e-mails opened, bounce backs, unsubscribes and click-through rates.

You can also tell who opened your e-mail, which links in your message resulted in the most clicks, who clicked on each link and how your contacts respond to surveys. All of this practical information can help you send targeted campaigns to those most likely to respond to your offer, significantly improving your results moving forward.

As previously reported, the agreement where Yahoo Sponsored Listings were being shown alongside search results in MSN will be coming to an end today. The end of this agreement was announced when MSN began running its MSN adCenter beta campaign earlier this year. MSN gradually reduced the percentage of sponsored ads being shown by Yahoo on its search listings and this transition to its own sponsored ads will be complete today. This change only affects US advertisers as non-US markets will still have Yahoo ads shown alongside the MSN results until adCenter is rolled out worldwide. The official announcement from Yahoo can be seen here.

This change should not cause much change for Yahoo Search Marketing clients as the transition has been gradual. Many accounts have noticed a decrease in their impressions as a result of not being shown alongside MSN search results. For advertisers looking to purchase sponsored listings in Microsoft's new adCenter advertising platform can visit here or give MasterLink a call!

-Mark Barrera

If you are a current Google Adwords advertiser or are thinking about joining the Adwords program, take notice of recent changes by Google.

Recently Google displayed a notice in all Adwords accounts notifying advertisers of a change in the terms of service and a change in the way an ad's quality score is determined.

In the new Adwords terms of service it states that the price an advertiser now pays is partially determined by the relevance of the landing page. Google will now be sending spiders to crawl the landing pages and check for the presence of keyword material that is relevant to the term that the searcher intially used.

What does this mean?

This means that you can most likely no longer simply pick a page in your site to send traffic to any more. The better targeted your landing page is, the less you will pay for each click. This can mean big savings for large ppc campaigns. Web site owners must now put up the initial investment needed for the creation of optimized landing pages in order to achieve long term savings.

I am pleased that Google has implemented this requirement as it rewards the advertisers who already knew the importance of post click marketing and the value of a properly optimized landing page. If you need help creating landing pages, choose a web design and internet marketing firm that is able to understand all aspects of proper on page optimization as well as in depth knowledge of the PPC advertising programs.

-Mark Barrera
PPC Management and Consulting

By Michael L. Clark

“Unless you’re a parent, you really can’t understand what I’m going through.” Ever heard that? The truth behind those simple words lies in one’s inability to identify experientially with another. For companies, however, the mantra they fear repeating may be, “Unless you’ve been targeted by attack blogs, you can’t possibly understand.”

Blogs began several years ago as a tool for online diaries. Today, they are the primary method for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns. With an estimated worldwide audience of 900 million, millions of blogs already in existence, and a hundred thousand new blogs created daily, the rapidly expanding blogosphere serves as both an advertiser’s dream and a marketing nightmare – depending on the nature of information that’s being promoted.

The blend of immense reach and legal immunity makes a potent recipe for corporate character assassination. Scores of often anonymous, virulent “investigative” and “factual” articles have crippled and even destroyed businesses, and the intoxicating power of negative “press” will only intensify. Some attack blogs are produced by individuals with an agenda, others by companies criticizing their competitors, while still others exist for the sole purpose of creating a stir. Regardless of the source, attack blogs are a reality that must be addressed by companies both small and large.

If a blogger wants to initiate an attack against your company, he has only to sit at a keyboard. However, MasterLink has developed a system of proactive, aggressive defense. The MasterLink Standard Blog Support Services program consists of 5 Levels, all at competitive investment pricing:

• Level I – Initial Internet Scan and Response
• Level II – Monthly Blog Service
• Level III – Third Party Blog Production
• Level IV – Company Blog Creation and Operation
• Level V – Forensic Blog Research/ Legal Review

Click here for details and subscriptions.

Blogs are here to stay. Once the attacks begin, companies can risk being blacklisted and having reputations shattered, or refuse to live in fear and fight smears with facts and expertise.

Yahoo has launched a new look to its homepage at http://www.yahoo.com. The new design has blended different programming languages by seamlessly integrating AJAX, Java, and HTML to create an easy to navigate and well laid out homepage.

Yahoo is the world's most visited page followed by Google, MSN, Baidu (the most popular web search engine in China), Yahoo Japan, and the fast growing Myspace. In the U.S. Yahoo is beating out Google for page views while Myspace has the third largest following.

An interview was conducted by with Yahoo! Chief Product Officer Ash Patel and Vice President of Front Doors Tapan Bhat on the features that have been added and the reasoning behind all of the changes. The podcast is available here.

Yahoo has added access to more content from the homepage and has started to emphasize videos, photos and multimedia. Yahoo is recognizing that many people are using broadband connections and is attempting to satisfy these users needs for multimedia rich websites.

The homepage is still in beta testing and no timeline has been presented for complete removal of the old homepage. Overall, I like the look and feel of the site and am glad that Yahoo has not given up on satisfying its users. Their last overhaul was in September of 2004, so it was time for a change.

-Mark Barrera

Mike Shaffer here at MasterLink has created a neat tool that allows you to convert your Google Sitemap to a Yahoo Sitemap compatible format, in this case a text file. A text sitemap is simply a list of the URLs of your site in the form of a text file. These can then be submitted to search engines such as Yahoo! to notify them that all the pages exist and by doing so invites their spider to visit.

Why do I need a Yahoo Sitemap?

Unless your pages are indexed in the search engines they can't send you the free visitors you are all looking for.

Fortunately, the search engines want your content too and there are a number of ways you can help them, which they encourage you to do - by creating sitemaps of your website. Sitemaps created for the various search engines will enable these search engines' spiders to crawl faster, more systematically, and more extensively into your website's pages.

By doing so, you get the maximum exposure you can. Such exposure will boost your pride in having your pages viewed, read, and used by more and more visitors the way you intended them to. On the financial aspect, the more visitors your website gets, the higher your website's potential advertising value.

Please let us know what you think of our Free Yahoo Sitemap Creator.

Click here to use the MasterLink Yahoo Sitemap creator:

-Mark Barrera
SEO Specialist

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates will be speaking to representatives of big advertisers and leading advertising agencies at a conference at Microsoft's headquarters today. Ballmer will be announcing the formal launch of MSN adCenter. This means that all paid advertisements on MSN in the US are now supplied by Microsoft's own ad network, fully competing for the first time with the more established networks of Google and Yahoo!. Previously, ads were coming from Yahoo! and MSN has slowly been phasing Yahoo! out over the past few months as their contract will expire at the end of this month.

MSN Contextual Advertising Network to Come Next

On Wednesday, Microsoft outlined a broad new offensive against Google as it laid out plans to insert the targeted advertising generated by its new AdCenter system into a range of digital services beyond internet search. The next step for MSN will be to get these ads showing across a broad range of sites and not just its search network. MSN is reportedly working on a contextual advertising program and that MSN will call this targeted ad netword "ContentAds." More information posted here as soon as we can gather more information.

On a side note...

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that MSN and Yahoo! have been in talks to combine aspects of their business to have a better shot at competing with Google. The report speculates that MSN might buy Yahoo! or some part of their technologies.

Recently, Microsoft reported lower than expected earnings due to increased investment in search technology and plans to continue to increase spending in this area to compete with Google. This makes you wonder what part of Yahoo's services that MSN would need because they are working to improve their algorithmic search results as well as develop their own advertising network. It seems that if MSN wanted to make quick advances in these areas they would not increase their R&D and branch out with their own network, but would instead partner with Yahoo! to battle Google.

Need Help in adCenter?

MasterLink was one of an estimated 6,000 advertisers to participate in the Beta testing of MSN adCenter and participate in a demo of adCenter from a group of MSN adCenter specialists. If your company is wanting to advertise in adCenter, please contact the PPC specialists at MasterLink who have experience in using MSN adCenter!

-Mark Barrera
Search Engine Marketing Services

According to a news report WebSideStory this week is announcing that it will marry its back-end Web analytics engine with consumer-facing search engine technology in Search Version 4.0.

The technology, dubbed Active Ranking and Active Navigation, allows the search engine to write to a suite of APIs in the analytics engine to pull data out of the system. Consumer searches on retail sites, for example, could present results based on most commonly purchased model, color, or style of product.

Essentially, this tool allows the analytics to determine in real-time what is most popular over a set period of time such as the last 30 days or 3 months. If a user on a cell phone site searched for Motorola on the site and the Pink Razor had the most purchases, then the search results would list the Pink Razor at the top of the results. This allows previous consumers to somewhat dictate what current shoppers are seeing.

Most web sites are currently using the analytics to determine the most popular items and then adjusting their site accordingly. Also, many sites such as Amazon.com utilize similar technologies to the recommend the products that people commonly buy that are related to the product that you are currently viewing. This technology takes it one step further and takes the manual labor out of the picture and automates the process in real time using these API’s.

What the future holds…

This technology has the ability to increase conversions dramatically. If sites can present these search results in this manner, one would think that the ability to build the site dynamically according to consumer preference is right around the corner. Here is a possible scenario:

A customer is on a phone company site. If they click on a link for phone service, the site would be able to instantly determine the most plan that has been purchased most frequently in the past week and then lead the customer to a page featuring that plan and then list the next most popular below, and so on.

Creating web pages or driving search results based on analytics was typically a behind-the-scenes manual operation, but now it can be automated. The end result for companies is less time spent analyzing data and more time to focus on other aspects of their marketing and their business.

-Mark Barrera
Search Engine Marketing Services

Please do not use this article unless you plan to keep all links active and please supply a link to this article.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently released a report on the effect that the Internet has on people's lives. According to the report:

"The internet has become increasingly important to users in their everyday lives. It is also the case that for many of online Americans, the internet has become a crucial source of information at major moments and milestones in their lives.

Our surveys show that 45% of internet users, or about 60 million Americans, say that the internet helped them make big decisions or negotiate their way through major episodes in their lives in the previous two years.

Specifically, we found that over the three-year period, internet use grew by:

-Mark Barrera
The MasterLink Group
Dallas Internet Marketing

I just received the following email from the MSN adCenter team:

We have listened to your feedback during the MSN® adCenter pilot, and we are excited to announce an upcoming update of the tool, with some new features that will offer you a better, easier, and more productive customer experience.

With these new features, you will be able to:

• Add multiple keywords when creating campaigns, rather than manually typing each keyword.
• Sign up for MSN adMail with the new Communication Preferences checklist.
• Print billing statements through our updated Billing tab.
• Estimate bids to help reach position one ad ranking through our improved price estimation tool.
• Insert text dynamically into an ad title or ad text (formerly known as parameters).

Please note that MSN adCenter will be down briefly while it's being updated on the afternoon of April 18. This should have no effect on your existing data or campaigns, which will remain live during this time. However, you will not be able to access your account or its features while we update adCenter, so we encourage you to make any needed immediate changes to your account beforehand.

To get more information about MSN Search, or to review frequently asked questions about MSN adCenter, check out our FAQ and Troubleshooting sections in the MSN adCenter Learning Center.

Sincerely,

The MSN adCenter team

These changes are going to be very beneficial to adCenter advertisers, with my favorite being the ability to add lists of keywords instead of the previous time consuming way of typing each keyword one at a time. The other key benefit of the upgrade will be the addition of the bid estimation tool. This will be very beneficial for advertisers who are targeting a specific ranking position. The part of this upgrade that is new to me is the MSN adMail. I assume that this will just be a way for MSN to communicate the latest news and changes to adCenter in an easy fashion. We will just have to be patient and wait until April 18th and test out the new features once the system is back online.

-Mark Barrera
Dallas Search Engine Optimization

Rumors in the search industry have been confirmed by Forbes that Yahoo will be testing a new and improved advertising system. They are claiming that it will be the best system to date, but I will only believe this when I see it. Reports say that they are testing the system with select advertisers in Scandinavia. The beta tests are expected to begin in June or late summer for the US advertisers. This new advertising system will feature dynamic bidding similar to Google and MSN which would take such factors as Click-Through-Rates and max bid price to determine the actual Cost-Per-Click. We will be searching for any screen shots and other fresh news on this MUCH AWAITED upgrade to Yahoo's antiquated system, so keep checking our blog for more info.

-Mark Barrera
Dallas Search Engine Marketing

Yahoo just announced that they have done a major update to their Index over the weekend. As a result, we ahve noticed some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index. Most of the changes seem to have had time to stablize but some search query seem to still be bouncing the results around pretty good. Thus far we have not seen much negative effects from this update. Meantime, if you have any comments or concers about the new index, feel free to email Yahoo at ystfeedback@yahoo.com.

-Mark Barrera
The MasterLink Group
Dallas Internet Marketing

This post is for all advertisers using MSN adCenter and are in need of help from an actual person. If you advertise in MSN adCenter and have clicked on the "HELP" button, you know that this button does nothing. The same is true when you attempt to "Contact Support" by means of the "Give us Feedback" link. It took me almost half an hour to find a phone number for adCenter technical support.

The phone number that I located that puts you in direct contact with the support desk at MSN adCenter is 1-800-966-7361. Their hours are 6:00am to 6:00pm PST. (TTY phone number is 1-800-877-9580).

I called this phone number and was directly connected to an MSN support representative, without having to go through any menus and withour entering any account information, which was very nice. I asked my question and was put on hold for less than 5 minutes and an answer was given to me. The answer was not the one I was looking for as they told me what I wanted to do was not yet possible, but none the less I had an answer from the adCenter help desk. I was also told that the issue of the "help" was being worked on by an MSN adCenter team and should be resolved "soon". This has been an issue for at least the 3 weeks that we have been using adCenter, so I hope this "team" can figure this thing out soon.

-Mark Barrera
Online Marketing
The MasterLink Group