But is it really their fault?

Are they really in control of all their ads? Let’s put aside the fact that the complaint was from a person visiting a porn site when he saw the InSing ad appear.

Being an online marketer helping Businesses in Singapore get their ads onto Search Engines and well, browsers near you, I’ve seen InSing ads EVERYWHERE and on almost EVERY KEYWORD related to food, leisure and recreation, local services and more. InSing is a new portal and the backers (SingTel) surely have deep pockets - it only makes sense to push a ton of ads through all channels; search networks and content networks.

Since the ad was encountered when viewing a website, we are most likely talking about the following sources:

• Content networks via Google Adwords/Adsense, Yahoo Search Marketing and the like.
• Direct Banner Ads, buying ad space directly with the website publisher
  

I’m pretty sure that SingTel would not approve of directly placing banner ads in questionable places, so we’d rule this one out.

How Content Networks work

Content networks are where you want your online ads to show for a thematic grouping of keywords. These ads appear on various places within websites, blogs and forums.

Taking Google as a good example to explain the situation, Adwords for Content is used by the Advertisers like SingTel/InSing. This is paired with Google Adsense where publishers of websites, blogs and forums indicate various locations on their webpages where the ads are to be shown. What connects the two, are the carefully themed keywords.

Adsense publishers do not have absolute control of what ads can appear. However, they can influence this by having worded content on their pages which address the themed keywords. These would draw the automated ads.

For this InSing situation, I’d expect that the worded content on the questionable webpages could include mundane themes like playing golf, swimming, going for manicures, dog training, descriptions of hobbies etc, while being peppered with images of pornography. No one would be the wiser of the keyword baiting process until the visitor makes a notice of the ads (other than the lewd images).

How to Manage where Your Content Ads are Showing

Apart from the Tarnishing of the Brand name, it’s also a cost for the Adwords Advertiser. What can you do to avoid both of these?

If you are on Google Adwords for Content, you can extract a free ad placement report that lists ALL the websites that your ads are being automatically placed on. If they are websites of a questionable nature, block them. And that’s it.

But new websites appear everyday, vying for your ads. So you have to do this monitoring periodically. Advertisers of new campaigns have to monitor these ad placements daily for a start. As the campaign matures, it is possible to reduce the monitoring effort to a monthly task.

So is SingTel to be blamed for this today?

Well, if you see the InSing ad on your favourite porn site today, you shouldn’t fault them. Yet.

If you still see the InSing ad on your same favourite porn site next week and also the month after that, then yes, they are absolutely at fault. This means that the ones managing their ad campaigns are not monitoring their ad placement reports.

Did the above statements sound ironic?

External Reading

• SingTel ad on porn site
• Excluding Ad Placements on Google Content Networks

In trying to show a richer set of results based on the new and different ways people create and share content, Google has had to find another way to present this rapid increase.

The SERP still shows search results based on regular (ok, these sometimes change) page ranking and relevance rules. But From May 2009, you would notice a Show Options link just below the search box.From your search list, you can now filter your results by Videos, Forums and Reviews. These are the more common ways people refine their search after a first round of keywords at the search line. 

The time based filters will be great for news articles and hot topical blogs. The searcher will be able to work down past posts relevant to the search keyword. This is a good nudge for content providers to keep their material updated and in tune with the times.

The Wonder Wheel is a significant new way to research a topic. Sometimes, you may not know an exact way of framing your query or search keywords. Just start somewhere with your search term and then fire up the Wonder Wheel (I think this is better called the Wander Wheel, but that’s just me).

You would be presented with a wheel with your root search in the centre, and a few spokes showing the most relevant related topics. You can click on a spoke and another wheel expands with more recommendations. The regular search results on the right side of the page follow the wheel’s focus, so you can jump out and read the link at any time.

This is a great contribution by Google in helping the user have a richer search result set.

What does it mean for the SEO consultant? For one, being at number 1 for a particular keyword in the “normal” SERP may not mean that you are number one in other filtered results. You may also have to start building related content to address the richer requirement of the searcher. And definitely, start examining the other formats of information and content sharing.

External Reading

• Google Blog, Search Options News Release

Are the big advertisers really doing it wrong? Are the PPC consultants not utilizing the feature correctly? Or do they simply use it as an easy way out?

A friend of mine suffered from an eye infection recently and I wanted to read more about her condition on the Internet. I did manage to learn more about it in the Organic section of the Search Engine. But what really caught my eyes (sorry) were the ads placed in the Sponsored areas.

These are sample screenshots from the Yahoo side. There were similar embarassments on the Google Adwords ads too.

So what is happening here? Personally, from scanning all these ads, I’m deriving that most of these companies are saying that “I have a wide range of eye products, et cetera.” and have pretty much left it to the search engines to plug all these search keywords into the ads almost indiscreetly and dynamically.

Some of the companies are more prudent, as you can see them making the effort in the ad text wording to support either a service they provide or a product they sell. But still the bad keyword mix appears.

In both these situations, the advertiser loses on CTR due to the lack of relevance. Over time, this would eventually lead to a higher CPC and overall paid search costs.

Most are not aware that there are two things at work here.

1. Dynamic Keyword Insertion is for keyword bolding.

When the keywords are bolded in the ad text, they catch the searcher’s eyes. And simply that. It should not be deployed as a miscellaneous function to catch every unplanned variant of the keyword. Which leads to the next point.

2. Broad Match Keywords are not fully controllable.

The nature of broad matches are to widen your advertising net, whether you had intended for those extra keywords or not. When you do keyword research in your target search engine, you will see a lot of suggested keywords in addition to direct variations to your entered keywords. All these suggested keywords are potentially part of your broad match pool of your keyword ad spend.

Yes, it’s rather scary how some of these are not even relevant to your original intent. Yes, that’s what the Negative keywords are for. No, you will not fully exhaust the negative list because the suggested keywords can change month to month.

I believe that the best, most manageable, most cost effective method for deploying Dynamic Keyword Insertion is this:

• List all the possible products that you offer, grouping by product line or theme. Include possible variants of naming them.
• Start a new adgroup for each theme
• Buy only the EXACT keyword matches for these keywords
• Write your DKI-enabled ads around these product clusters or theme.

You control exactly which keywords will be bolded in your dynamic ad.

It will feel tedious initially, but it will be the clearest way to manage your keyword list. And it is forward moving - you only add to these when you discover a new keyword variant (perhaps through your Analytics) or have a new product offering.

You would, of course, still have your other ad groups that focused on other marketing aspects; like branding or name-squeeze actions. But these tend to have more generic or broad keywords. I cannot recommend using DKI methods for them.

External Reading

• How do I use keyword insertion? - AdWords Help
• Google AdWords Dynamic Keyword Insertion | SEO Book.com
• Dynamic Keyword Insertion Tips

These are really fundamental stuff that you shouldn’t be paying a SEO consultant to tell you.

1. BYOD - Buy Your Own Domain

If you have your own bricks-and-mortar small business, would you send mail to your neighour’s house? Blogspots, Facebook Groups, Free Directories and others, have their place in the Internet online marketing arena - but nothing beats credibility than having your own domain.

Besides, it’s really cheap to register a name and get basic hosting.

Having your own business name as your domain name is great for branding purposes. But it’s not the end of the SEO game if you can’t get that. There are many businesses out there, whose service or product offerings shout louder than their business name. This is what Search Engine Optimization is all about.

Having your own domain primarily gives you control in developing the SEO effort for your website.

2. Website Analytics is your Key Intelligence

A good battle plan survives on good intel.

If you already have your own website, you need to know about:

• How many people are coming to your website (traffic),
• How they come to your website (typing your domain name or Google/Yahoo/etc search?),
• What pages do they visit and how long do they stay (quality of content),
• Where in the world do they come from (market segments)
• etc

Google Analytics gives the small business owner all these insights and more. Usually the challenge comes in interpreting the information and taking appropriate action based on that information. But if you are starting out new on this, don’t worry too much about it. Plug in the Analytics Code first, and just let the traffic flow. Understanding will come when the numbers grow a little.

At worst, you will already have some traffic history for when you engage the SEO Consultant. This would invariably be the first step for the consultant and just implementing this SEO tip today will save you time.

3. Content By Keyword

When your business is a going concern, there is usually no shortage of words to describe what you offer or your company does. Building content for your webpages is usually a minor hassle when compared to how to actually structure that content.

A good SEO tip would be to do some Keyword Research based on what your business offers or solves. The free version of Wordtracker helps you see what people are typically searching for. What they search for, become the keywords that you can target for your content.

Remember that as a business, you offer solutions. However, people tend to search by their problems or pain. Do not forget to include content pages for the symptomatic conditions leading to your service offering.

4. Keyword in your Title

This SEO tip is probably the most important thing that you can do for your own website. The Title is the prime real estate space on any website. It is the primary means by which major search engines start evaluating your web content and checking if the rest of the page content aligns to this.

Which is why you would never leave it to say “Welcome to my website”. Nor have it the same on every page on your website. Internet Marketers know this and sometimes they go the other extreme of spamming keywords here.

If you have already written unique content and had it aligned to some important keywords, then choose the most important keyword as a Title for that page. It can be a page for a problem that is addressed, or a page for a solution that resolves the problem. The point here also, is that every page title should be differentiated and targeted.

5. Link Strategically and Appropriately

In your natural business, would you associate your business name to just any other organisation? Probably not. You would have a plan as to how to align your company to other companies; be they alliances, friendly competitors or partners along your value chain or supply chain.

It’s the same online. Don’t just buy into a link farm. Have a strategy about it too.  The SEO tip here is that there are 3 types of links that can build on/for your website.

• Internal Links - These are fully the links that you control, navigating the reader from the content pages describing their problem areas to the content pages describing your offered products and services. This is a powerful strategy and the search engine spiders like these.

• Outbound Links - These are links that you place on your webpages, bringing the reader OUT of your website. Who you link to, also tells your readers who you associate with. So rather than paying a link farm (which the search engines would probably detect and penalize anyway), you should build your outbound links the same way you build your natural business referrals. Link to these websites where they add to your overall value proposition. If you are wary and not sure of the external link but still wish to have them linked anyway, put them on a separate page of links AWAY from your business offering pages.

• Inbound Links -Inbound links are links on other people’s websites that bring readers INTO your website. Apart from the SEO linkage effect of incoming links from reputable websites, you would also want relevant reader traffic. You want to build inbound links from relevant trade associations, forums, targeted directories, and perhaps even from blogs of people in your similar or compatible business segment. Again, avoid link farms - it is like “guilty by association”.

These are the Basic SEO Tips that you can do for yourself, even without engaging any SEO Consultant yet. Who ever you hire, would also put you through these paces. At a chargeable rate.

You want your SEO Experts to work harder. I’ll have a later post to show you what you should expect from them.

External Reading

• http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291
• http://searchengineland.com/21-essential-seo-tips-techniques-11580
• http://www.whitehatmedia.com/papers-and-articles/top-10-seo-tips.html

Virpi Tervonen is a prolific publisher of many online books and she shares her personal blueprints in the Internet Info Profits Workshop held in Singapore.

The Internet Info Profits (IIP) Inaugural Workshop was launched during Asia Internet Congress 2008.

I had the pleasure of attending this workshop and WOW! This is the Real Deal. Virpi had practically revealed her whole product creation framework. You can see that she wants us to succeed!

She carefully guided us through our niche selection process that we can make a product offering to. Step by step, she shows us how to do market and competitor research in our chosen niches. We also learned where and how we can quickly put together our product content. Even how to conduct interviews with the content experts.

Should your product be a downloadable e-book? A video series? Audio materials for your iPod or car stereo? She covers that too! And much more..

I believe that after a few more mentor-led workshops, she’d be ready to package this workshop into a successful e-product globally. But nothing beats the direct guidance of the mentor. Nor the early-mover advantage for your own range of Internet Products.

I hear that Virpi will hold another workshop within 2009. If you are in Singapore, or plan to come through for the next Internet Info Profits Workshop, write me a quick note at the following link and I will get back to you when she confirms the dates.

PaulPrefers.com/Internet-Info-Profits

Don’t get me wrong - I love online survey services like SurveyMonkey.

But marketers trying out such online services will realise that the URLS are terribly long. No one will do the survey if they need to key in the whole convoluted URL.

Which is why I fell off my chair when I saw the long URL in an Editor’s Letter. Yes. In a PRINTED magazine.

Short URLs are a more elegant way to redirect the eye-traffic to those surveys. Tiny URL services (usually free) are online services which let you use a short link name to represent your longer, hard to type, cryptic long links. These short URLs are typically 5-8 generated alphanumeric digits. It’s still easier than the SurveyMonkey’s link. Some services also let you choose your own shortened name or code, if it’s available.

In this Twitter age, the tiny URL service is becoming more indispensible. You only have 140 characters on the twitter message, so users typically have to redirect followers to a webpage with the full story.

I found a rather comprehensive List of short URL Redirection Services, and I’m using some of them. But as you walkthrough that list, you’d see some of the problems associated with short URL services - typically, server overloads (hence linkrots) and blocked (due to regular rickrolling and used-for-spam). But as with any free online service, you work out your own risk and usage tolerance.

As of 1st May 2009, the affiliate program, Amazon Associates, will no longer pay referral fees for Paid Search sales. This means that if you have been driving PPC traffic to Amazon via product keywords on Google, Yahoo and MSN, you’re out of luck.

And Amazon’s not dumb. They know about interstitial pages; they won’t pay referral fees for these either. In other words, paid search advertisements to page redirections are also not allowed.

Your only option now is content. You have to build some value about the product that you are selling. You are still allowed to use PPC to drive traffic to your website, but you’ve got to win your customers by selling value. You can also use your SEO skills to drive organic traffic to your website.

Might as well start checking out Info Product Killer. This is a good blueprint to build your content around a range of Amazon products that you are targeting. It targets the Christmas season, mainly because of the buying volume during that period. But that knowledge is evergreen - it will also work when you build product content around themes.

It used to be that when you are logged in to your google account (e.g. gmail), Google would be passively tuning your search results to what it thinks would be more relevant to you.

Now you can have a more active role in what you wish to see. You can now promote a search result, or even remove it completely. And you can add comments and notes too, with the option of making the comment public. These are available as 3 new icons visible against each search result line.

Users are now able to tailor their search results to a high degree. You can also see how other users tailor their results, with their google accounts also available there.

It will be interesting to see if these new additions will have an impact on SEO efforts vis-a-vis SERP positions in the non-personalized environment. That is, when a user searches via Google, but isn’t logged into a Google Account.

Check out this fab video by CommonCraft.com

Bottom line: As an Internet Marketer, this can be one of the ways that you develop a niche/product that you have an interest in, and have a natural community of like-minded people getting connected to you.

Check out this quick video by CommonCraft.

Bottom line: This is a great personal time-saver during your Internet Marketing journey. You will have to read up on what the gurus out there are doing, or new tips and tricks being found, or new tools and products are coming up. So start getting a feed from their blogs or news pages today.