http://www.practicalecommerce.com/authors/12/Boris-Mordkovich/ Boris Mordkovich is the director of operations at AdWatcher, a firm specializing in click fraud prevention and detection. Visit his company at Adwatcher.com or contact him at boris@adwatcher.com. en-us Copyright 2007 Confluence Publishing Wed, 03 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/rss/ Practical Ecommerce v2.0.1 Ecommerce kmurdock@practicalecommerce.com bgetting@practicalecommerce.com 60 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/579/Local-Pay-Per-Click-Opportunities-For-Small-Businesses/ It’s been over a year and a half since I last covered the local pay-per-click market for Practical eCommerce. If there is one thing you can depend on, it is that this industry does not stand still. It’s definitely time to go over the latest opportunities and trends in the local pay-per-click space and ways you can apply them to your business. The local online marketing industry is growing by leaps and bounds, but it’s still very fragmented, primarily because many portals choose to concentrate on specific topics (e.g., restaurants) or specific locations rather than trying to encompass everything. This makes sense. It’s easier to achieve critical mass working within a niche market and serving a targeted and interested audience, as opposed to trying to be all things to all people. Unfortunately, this also means that each business needs to explore the options available specifically to them, as they will vary depending upon the industry and the location. There are several... Wed, 03 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/579/Local-Pay-Per-Click-Opportunities-For-Small-Businesses/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/536/Conventional-Wisdom-The-Best-Pay-Per-Click-Seminars/ One fortunate thing about being in the pay-per-click industry today is that there is easy access to a lot of useful and high-quality information. Whether it is magazines (such as this one), blogs, websites, and conferences and tradeshows — all are meant to help you grow your business through online marketing. Conferences and in-person events are a terrific learning opportunity. But, there are so many events throughout the year that it becomes difficult to decide which ones to attend. So to help you with that decision, I am including a breakdown of the best events for those interested in pay-per-click advertising. PPC Summit (Ppcsummit.com) — A series of small, two-day events programmed and developed by past Yahoo! Search Marketing executives. These events take place throughout the year in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and London and are small enough (about 150-250 attendees) that every attendee gets personalized attention from the speakers. High Rankings... Wed, 08 Aug 2007 11:01:18 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/536/Conventional-Wisdom-The-Best-Pay-Per-Click-Seminars/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/513/Google-AdWords-It-Just-Keeps-Getting-Better/ Over the past few months, Google has announced a number of new features in the AdWords interface. Some are relatively minor and simply affect the interface; some offer new functionality and a lot of value to the advertiser. Either way, they can help you run your AdWords campaigns more effectively, so it’s important to be aware of them. Three recent improvements worthy of investigation are: IP Exclusion – Google has finally added the ability to exclude certain people from viewing your ads, thus giving you an opportunity to put those third-party click fraud reports to good use. Simply login into your AdWords interface, go to Tools and select IP Exclusion. At that point, you can enter up to 20 IP addresses that you’d like to block. Just be careful and don’t go too overboard, as you may block off legitimate traffic as well. Placement Performance Report – a terrific new feature that provides you with a wealth of information regarding the performance of your ads within... Sun, 01 Jul 2007 13:30:07 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/513/Google-AdWords-It-Just-Keeps-Getting-Better/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/511/Click-Fraud-Not-Top-PPC-Concern/ Click fraud has been a popular topic of discussion for a number of years, and it doesn’t appear the issue will fade away anytime soon. The industry is full of various numbers thrown around putting the click fraud rate anywhere from .02 percent (claimed by Google) to 30 percent or more. Who should you believe about click fraud, and how much should you be worried? First of all, it’s important to understand the real rate of click fraud can vary significantly from one company to another; thus, you should take any click-fraud rate numbers with a grain of salt. The percentage of click fraud will depend on a dozen different factors, such as ad position, bid price and specific industry type. The more competitive the industry and the more you pay per click, the more incentive there is for others to try to defraud you. Second, it’s very important to understand that click fraud by itself is not the determining factor in whether your pay-per-click (PPC) campaign is a success. I have... Wed, 27 Jun 2007 09:20:03 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/511/Click-Fraud-Not-Top-PPC-Concern/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/484/How-To-Create-Buzz-Boost-Traffic-At-Your-Site/ Over the last year or so, "social media" has quickly become the next "big" thing online. A plethora of social communities with names like Digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Wikipedia and YouTube have popped up to connect people who share common interests. As impressive as all that may sound, what does it actually mean to you, the operator of a small- to mid-sized ecommerce site? What benefits can you reap from social media optimization (SMO), and how should you approach it? First, let's review what SMO is. In a nutshell, social media optimization is the use of any sort of content that creates buzz within a specific community and attracts audience participation. A good example is Digg. At this site, Digg community members identify news stories and articles they like by "digging" them or express dissatisfaction by "burying" them. The upside is that stories with a large enough number of "diggs" make it to the front page of a website that can attract literally thousands of visitors... Mon, 21 May 2007 13:51:48 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/484/How-To-Create-Buzz-Boost-Traffic-At-Your-Site/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/472/Free-Search-Marketing-Tools/ During the last few years, the search engine marketing (SEM) industry has grown significantly. Many new resources have popped up to offer all kinds of information and advice. However, many people find this avalanche of information overwhelming. How can you distinguish the truly useful and accurate sources from the less trustworthy ones? Here is a list of resources that I personally use to stay on top of the industry. Best SEM blogs Use these to stay on top of all the latest developments in (and analysis of) the industry. o Searchengineland.com o Searchenginewatch.com o SEObook.com o SEOmoz.org o Stuntdubl.com o Jimboykin.com o Marketingpilgrim.com Best SEM forums Join the community of advertisers and SEM experts in sharing and receiving free advice regarding anything SEM-related. o Forums.digitalpoint.com o Highrankings.com/forum/ o Webmasterworld.com o Forums.searchenginewatch o Cre8asiteforums.com/forums/ Best free SEM tools Visit these sites to... Mon, 30 Apr 2007 14:44:15 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/472/Free-Search-Marketing-Tools/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/460/Crash-Course-on-Pay-Per-Click-Arbitrage/ If you've spent any time on pay-per-click (PPC) forums or in the blogosphere, you've probably heard about PPC arbitrage — the ill-reputed practice that drives bid prices up and makes life more difficult for advertisers. So, what exactly is it, and how can it affect you as an advertiser? In a nutshell, pay-per-click arbitrage is the practice of bidding on low-cost keywords, purchasing clicks from Google, Yahoo! and other search engines and then redirecting the visitors to dummy, one-page websites created solely for the purpose of hosting expensive AdSense ads. The arbitrageur makes money because he/she buys the first click at a cost much lower than the fee received as an affiliate when visitors click on the dummy site's ads. Enough clicks through the affiliate ad and the arbitrageur collects plenty of money to offset the cost of the initial PPC ad. Still, why is this even an issue for discussion when it could be argued that someone is simply taking advantage of market... Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:02:52 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/460/Crash-Course-on-Pay-Per-Click-Arbitrage/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/454/Contextual-Advertising-What-You-Need-to-Know/ If you have considered using contextual advertising through a Google content network — or any other venue — there are a few things to consider before you give it a try. Contextual advertising is what you experience when ads based on the content of a web page you're viewing dynamically "appear" without external prompting. This usually takes place in an automated or partially-automated manner. The ad management system "sees" you are viewing a page about kayaking, and it "learns" this by examining the words or other elements on the page. The system then provides an ad that's related to kayaking. That's the "contextual" part of the equation. (On the example to the left, the "sponsored links" at About.com show ads related to the topic that is on the page —in this case it's thyroid disease.) Many analysts say that contextual ads lead to fewer conversions than pay-per-click (PPC) search engine ads due to the problem of timing. There's no way to calculate how the ad's arrival... Wed, 04 Apr 2007 12:25:54 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/454/Contextual-Advertising-What-You-Need-to-Know/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/419/Google-Is-Keeping-Score-Of-Your-Keywords/ It's one of the topics that floats to the top in the search marketing world and generates intense discussion — even though no one knows exactly what it means: "Quality Score." In the usual, Google AdWords sense, Quality Score is the measurement of several variables, such as keyword clickthrough rate (CTR), ad text relevance and even the perceived quality of landing pages. An individual keyword's score (and by extension, its bid price) is not set in stone on Google. It can go up or down based on changes to the ad, keyword, or landing page. This score can also be increased with a good CTR, which benefits both Google and the advertiser. Google offers a number of suggestions to improve landing pages and drive bid prices on keywords down. Primarily, Google wants advertisers to meet these baseline goals: • Provide "relevant and substantial content," by linking your ad to a page that offers precisely what was offered in the advertisement. • Treat a user's personal... Wed, 14 Feb 2007 16:24:20 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/419/Google-Is-Keeping-Score-Of-Your-Keywords/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/383/Outsourcing-Pay-per-click/ Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a long-term, time-consuming endeavor. Business owners that are serious about search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns, and who want those efforts to lead to strong sales, must realize the implementation of PPC is not something to take lightly. To achieve success, a great deal of time and effort must be dedicated to PPC campaigns. Consequently, one of a business owner's first decisions should be whether to hire someone in-house to conduct PPC campaigns or to outsource it to an agency. If you decide to keep your PPC campaigns in-house, be prepared for the hurdle of finding qualified, trained employees. Unfortunately, the supply of people with a good working knowledge of the industry is very limited. Since colleges and universities don't teach this element to students (at least not yet), most of the people who wind up in this field have learned it on their own; they're more likely to want to go into business for themselves. When you do hire... Mon, 08 Jan 2007 09:53:05 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/383/Outsourcing-Pay-per-click/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/358/Yahoo-Search-Marketing-Releases-New-Platform/ Yahoo! Search Marketing may have been a pioneer in the pay-per-click industry, but anyone who has ever used its advertiser's interface would probably agree that it has been light-years behind Google AdWords for quite some time. The interface is cumbersome, slow and just plain difficult for advertisers wanting to update their listings and make changes to improve their campaigns. However, Yahoo! finally acknowledged the problem and spent a considerable amount of time and effort this year improving the interface to make it more user friendly, faster and more scalable. Just a few weeks ago, Yahoo! announced the new platform - code-named "Panama" - was finally being released. This new system will replace the one in use ever since they acquired Overture (formerly Goto.com) in 2003. The release is still limited. The complete roll-out of Panama's ranking algorithm will not go live until the first quarter of 2007. However, current Yahoo! advertisers will have the option of... Fri, 01 Dec 2006 00:00:05 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/358/Yahoo-Search-Marketing-Releases-New-Platform/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/342/A-Closer-Look-at-Microsoft-adCenter/ Microsoft adCenter was officially launched in May after a nine-month beta period in the U.S. Surprisingly, however, many business owners and advertisers are not aware of its existence, and, among those who are, some are hesitant to try it out. While Google and Yahoo! have had pay-per-click programs in place for years, relative newcomer adCenter has several interesting features deserving attention. For example, unlike its competitors, adCenter lets advertisers customize ads by various demographics. Demographic information is pulled based on a user’s Microsoft Passport account (Passport is a single sign-on solution that powers many Microsoft services, including Hotmail and MSN Messenger, and is integral to the new Windows Live services). With demographic customization, if your product is targeted at middle-aged men, you can target your ads to show up only for searches conducted by users in that demographic. Taking it a step further, adCenter recently added behavioral... Wed, 01 Nov 2006 16:33:33 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/342/A-Closer-Look-at-Microsoft-adCenter/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/316/Should-You-Add-SEO-To-Your-Marketing-Efforts/ Pay-per-click advertising is, no doubt, one of the most effective ways of getting new leads and prospects to come to your website. Within a period of 24 hours, any business—large or small—can appear at the top positions for any keyword that’s applicable to their business. However, it does have its downfalls. Primarily, at the point when you stop paying for the clicks, your ads disappear from the search results. In other words—no money, no honey. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a different animal. It is accomplished by optimizing your website to make it more search-engine friendly and increasing your link popularity by purchasing or exchanging links, so that it will rank higher in the natural results. SEO is quite difficult, and nobody has the right, sure-fire way of doing it. It takes months to get up to the first pages of results for specific keywords and, even then, there are no guarantees you will stay there. Also, while you don’t have to pay for... Sun, 01 Oct 2006 01:25:00 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/316/Should-You-Add-SEO-To-Your-Marketing-Efforts/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/287/Does-Google-Checkout-Affect-Your-Business/ On June 30, 2006 Google launched a service called Google Checkout. This is a new application allowing businesses to process online orders through Google. It serves as an alternative to PayPal or regular credit-card processing. It’s interesting to look at the launch of this service from Google’s point of view to try to understand how it ties in with their core business — search. In theory, many buyers begin their shopping process by searching for what they want on Google (or any other search engine). Next, they click on an advertiser’s link and go to the business’ website. By taking care of the final step — processing the actual purchase — Google can accumulate a vast amount of information about their own advertisers and use that information to further improve AdWords. The tie-in with Google AdWords is quite logical. In fact, Google launched its Checkout service with a special promotion: for every $1 advertisers spend on AdWords, they can process $10 in sales... Fri, 01 Sep 2006 00:18:00 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/287/Does-Google-Checkout-Affect-Your-Business/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/258/Pay-Per-Call-New-Player-on-the-Scene/ Online advertising is heating up and growing quickly in popularity. However, many companies are missing out if they don’t have a website or if their services are not fit to be sold over the web. Fortunately, a new version of paid advertising has emerged recently — pay-per-call. Pay-per-call advertising is of particular interest to those businesses that do not want to invest in setting up and maintaining a website, but yet want to take advantage of advertising on the Internet. Some search engines bring up a page specific to your business at no extra charge if the visitor clicks on your ad. That is, you are not charged for anything until the visitor actually makes the call. The toll-free number then redirects the visitor to your actual phone number and you receive the phone call from the interested buyer at your business location. Some companies find it a useful addition to their pay-per-click campaigns, particularly to avoid charges by those users merely seeking a phone... Tue, 01 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/258/Pay-Per-Call-New-Player-on-the-Scene/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/237/Tips--Tricks-for-Discovering-Lowcost-Keywords/ Keywords are considered the lifeline of any successful pay per click campaign. If you select the wrong ones, you can zip through your entire advertising budget without getting anything in return. If you choose the right ones, you can beat your competition to the punch and get a better ROI by spending less. As an advertiser, you can bid on as many keywords as you wish — there are no limits. Most successful advertisers start off with 500-2,000 keywords and add on more as they go along. There are a number of tools available on the market that can help you find these keywords. They include KeywordDiscovery.com and WordTracker.com. In addition, most search engines also offer their own versions of keyword-research tools. There are a few things you can do to build up your keyword inventory. Start off by opening a new Notepad file and thinking of five to 10 general terms that are relevant to your business. Try to think like the customers to whom you are marketing: What terms do... Sat, 01 Jul 2006 12:00:00 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/237/Tips--Tricks-for-Discovering-Lowcost-Keywords/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/224/Grow-Profits-by-Split-Testing-Ads/ Successful business owners and marketing professionals know that great results from advertising are rarely owed to luck and guessing. Whether they specialize in online or offline promotion, they have known for years that the secret to achieving high return of investment is through splittesting. Split-testing is a way of measuring multiple ads, creative layouts, and landing pages against each other to learn which ones perform better, and which will, in turn, improve your overall return on investment. The way it works is quite simple: you start by taking an existing ad from any search engine that you advertise on. Then, change one word or offer in the headline or in the description of the ad to create a new ad, and run both simultaneously. Within a few days or weeks, depending on your traffic and sales volume, you will collect enough data to determine which version converts better. Once you have that information, leave the “winner” as is and introduce a new... Thu, 01 Jun 2006 12:00:00 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/224/Grow-Profits-by-Split-Testing-Ads/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/197/2nd-Tier-Search-Engines---Are-They-Worth-It/ As far as most advertisers are concerned, there are only two pay-per-click search engines that deserve their attention - Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing. After all, these are the most popular search engines that dominate the industry in terms of traffic, technology, and popularity. However, this also means that the competition on these search engines is so fierce, it makes it too costly for smaller players to get into the game. Fortunately, another category of pay-per-click search engines exists, known as 2nd Tier. Don't let the name fool you - many of them process in excess of millions of searches per month, and some are actual public companies or wholly owned subsidiaries thereof (such as MIVA, ePilot, Marchex, and several others). 2nd Tier also includes search engines such as SearchFeed.com, Enhance.com, Kanoodle.com, 7Search.com, PageSeeker.com, Search123.com, and so on. While all of them combined yield less traffic volume that Google AdWords alone, you may... Mon, 01 May 2006 12:00:00 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/197/2nd-Tier-Search-Engines---Are-They-Worth-It/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/175/Winning-the-Fight-Against-Click-Fraud/ If somebody were to tell you that 20% of your advertising budget was being wasted on fraud, would you be worried? If you advertise on pay-per-click search engines, such as Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture), MIVA, or others, you have reason to be concerned. According to CNet.com, up to 20% of all pay-per-click activity delivered to advertisers is fraudulent. Two of the most common sources include competitors trying to deplete your account by repeatedly clicking on your ads, or a search engine’s partner or affiliate increasing their own bottom line by clicking on your ads. As an advertiser, you must rely on the effectiveness of the search engine’s fraud monitoring techniques. However, given that they stand to gain financially from fraudulent clicks (since your ad account is charged each time any click is made on your ad), there is an apparent conflict of interest. Fortunately, there are a number of ways you can go about detecting click... Sat, 01 Apr 2006 12:00:00 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/175/Winning-the-Fight-Against-Click-Fraud/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/158/Attracting-Local-Customers-Using-Pay-Per-Click/ Many business owners have a perception that just because they cater to a local market, they can’t use the power of online advertising to attract new customers. The reality is quite different. Recent developments in the pay-per-click industry allow even the localized business to get in the game. Several search engines actually allow you to target prospects in any desired geographic area. In other words, if you sell a product or service and can only cater to a specific state or city, you can target your ads to only show up when potential clients from that location are searching for them. Currently, there are 3 options that you can consider for Local advertising: YAHOO! SEARCH MARKETING – LOCAL MATCH With Yahoo!, you can specify a list of keywords describing your services or products and then select the area they serve using a map. Your ads will show when users’ searches contain the keywords and locations that are within the area specified. Bidding in “Local Match”... Wed, 01 Mar 2006 12:00:00 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/158/Attracting-Local-Customers-Using-Pay-Per-Click/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/147/Pay-per-click-Tools-Maximize-Your-Time/ As a business owner and entrepreneur, you know that there are two things you can always use more of - money and time. While you are likely to increase the first item by reading this column, you can also free up more time by automating the management of your search marketing campaigns. Over the last few years, the pay-per-click industry has sparked a number of software applications to make life easier and more efficient for search engine advertisers. The first tool that no advertiser should ever be without is a quality bid manager. Such an application manages all of your keywords and bids throughout the search engines that you advertise on. It can automatically maintain a desired position, catch and close bid gaps to make sure that you don’t overpay for clicks, and stay on top of your competitors. My recommended program for this is BidMaximizer™ (bidmaximizer.com). It starts at $20 per month, is fully automated, and runs in the background while you are doing other work. The... Wed, 01 Feb 2006 12:00:00 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/147/Pay-per-click-Tools-Maximize-Your-Time/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/125/Be-Careful-of-the-Number-1-Spot/ Pay-Per-Click advertising works in an auction-based format, since there are a number of advertisers competing for the same keywords. The higher you bid, the higher your ad will appear. Bids can range anywhere from a few cents to several dollars per click, based on how competitive the industry is. PPC, by its nature, is a very dynamic form of advertising. As new advertisers come and go in the marketplace, bid prices change on a daily basis. When you’re just starting your Pay-Per-Click ad campaign, it’s important to research what other advertisers are paying. Yahoo, for example, offers a free tool that lets you check how much your competitors pay for specific keywords. The tool is available at uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/. Keep in mind that the bid prices can vary tremendously based on the popularity of keywords. A general keyword, such as “laptops” might be twice as expensive as opposed to a more targeted keyword, like “affordable laptops”. One of... Sun, 01 Jan 2006 12:00:00 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/125/Be-Careful-of-the-Number-1-Spot/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/110/Use-Googles-Site-Targeting/ Google advertisers, rejoice! If you ever wished you could pick and choose which sites across Google AdSense network your ads will appear, now you can! In a recent development, Google AdWords introduced a new advertising model called Site Targeting, which gives you the ability to target your ads to specific content sites within the Google network. In a nutshell, the biggest flaw of a pay-per-click advertising model is that you can only go after people that know what they need and are actively looking for it. This means that you’re leaving out the potential market share that are either not aware of your product or simply don’t know they need it yet. You can reach those prospects by advertising on sites they are likely to be visiting. Google even offers a tool that allows you to find related websites participating in the program. Unlike Google’s standard CPC (“Cost Per Click”), program with Site Targeting you pay on a CPM basis (per thousand impressions) with the... Thu, 01 Dec 2005 12:00:00 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/110/Use-Googles-Site-Targeting/