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Welcome to the ineedhits Search Engine Marketing blog, where we share the latest search engine and online marketing news, releases, industry trends and great DIY tips and advice.

We encourage you to get involved in our blog community - so share your opinions and experiences by leaving comments on our posts.

If you're looking for help with promoting your website - check out our range of affordable search engine marketing services.

Monday, April 28

Yahoo! Search Monkey Business Unveiled

Earlier this year, Yahoo! initiated discussions about opening up Yahoo! Search to web site owners and developers in an effort to enhance the functionality, appearance and usefulness of its search results.

April 24th marked the release of the developer platform, named SearchMonkey. Whether this title accurately predicts the usefulness of the new initiative is yet to be seen, but it was an obvious marketing play, if the release post titled "start monkeying around" is anything to go by.

And now to the monkey business. What can website owners and would-be developers do with the new SearchMonkey platform. According to the release:

Site owners can build enhanced search results that will provide searchers with a more useful experience by including links, images and name-value pairs in the search results for their pages (likely resulting in an increase in traffic quantity and quality)

Developers can build SearchMonkey apps that enhance search results, access Yahoo! Search's user base and help shape the next generation of search

Users can customize their search experience with apps built by or for their favorite sites

The SearchMonkey release coincides with other significant changes and the news that Yahoo! is transforming itself into an open and social platform from the ground up.

Together with SearchMonkey, they're unifying all their social properties creating user synergies across various Yahoo! social sites and apps under the technical architecture known as Y!OS - Yahoo! Open Strategy.

Yahoo! has announced more improvements and new releases in the last few months, than since I can remember. Seems the good old Y! had a few tricks up its sleeve - good timing given the heat from both shareholders and Microsoft.

Will it all pay off - I guess we'll find out soon enough. Til then, if you're interested in monkeying around - then sign up for the SearchMonkey preview.

The Googley Principles - The Google Guide to Good Web Design

Google's User Experience Group (UX), which is responsible for interface and visual design for Google's various web properties and projects, were asked to define the principles behind a Googley User experience.

Google shared the UX's Googley Principles on their Official Blog, in what might seem like a warm and fuzzy corporate PR exercise - however pay attention - there are some important lessons for all website owners.

The Googley Design Principles Are:

1. Focus on people - their lives, their work, their dreams.
Put simply - focus your designs on the audience, and their intrinsic needs and wants. More often than not, users don't need to see flashing neon banners - they simply need you to show them how you'll address their requirements, mitigate their fears and satisfy their needs.

2. Every millisecond counts.
The online world is "time precious" and users are impatient. Give them what they need quickly in a way that's fast and easy to digest!

3. Simplicity is powerful.
KISS (Keep it Simple Silly) - the oldest rule of marketing, design and life (for most of us). Complexity creates confusion, distracts from the goal and alienates users.

4. Engage beginners and attract experts.
Don't fall into the trap of designing for the lowest common denominator. Great design makes it easy for novices to get involved but also keeps it interesting for the more proficient user/visitor.

5. Dare to innovate.
Constantly challenge yourself to try something new and to stand out from the pack - always keeping in mind that the innovation should be user-centric.

6. Design for the world.
The World Wide Web knows no boundaries - so try to design for all potential audiences. That includes people, as well as technology (e.g. broadband vs dial up) and accessibility (i.e. mobile devices).

7. Plan for today's and tomorrow's business.
Business is about being sustainable. So always design with your long term goals in mind. Don't focus on quick win strategies that hurt potential long term viability.

8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
Design is supposed to compliment and enhance the content - not overpower it. The key is creative subtlety. If your design distracts - then it detracts from your goals.

9. Be worthy of people's trust.
Trust is vital for business success, and design plays an integral part in alleviating user concerns and building visitor confidence - be that through professional appearance, clear navigation, accessibility to relevant information or use of assurance builders such as testimonials and affiliations.

10. Add a human touch.
People like dealing with people. Design with this is mind. Talk to the user, make their journey intuitive, and show some personality in your design and approach.

While much of this sounds rather common sense, trawl the web for only 10 mins and you'll find plenty of websites and applications that break one, if not all, of these principles.

Don't get too caught up in the process of making your design all about the "bells and whistles" - at the end of the day it's all about the user! Refer to this list before embarking on your next design project.

Re-Design Breathes New Life into AOL

AOL has announced that traffic to their programming sites hit an all time high in March 2008 after 6 months on continuous growth.

Page views on AOL's programming sites jumped 35% in March, compared to a year ago, while unique visitors rose 11%, to 56.5 million users, according to ComScore Media Metrix.

So what is the secret to such growth for AOL?

AOL Vertical Programming Executive Vice President Bill Wilson explains that "our strong growth is a direct result of rebuilding each and every one of our vertical Web sites over the past 12 months, with the goal of providing consumers highly relevant and rich experiences that focus on key passion points... The consistent and strong growth in both reach and engagement, along with the newly reorganized Platform-A, gives us a great opportunity moving forward to monetize our increasingly highly engaged audience."

ComScore ranked AOL's Platform-A as the No. 1 advertising network, reaching 170,537 million unique visitors in March, or close to 91% of all domestic online users.

Two of AOL's core sites that received a makeover included Money & Finance, which rose 24% in year-over-year page views in March and Sports, which rose a massive 148%.

It would appear that AOL is doing something right with its transformation strategy and this may be just the beginning of a strong comeback for the former Internet king.

Google AdWords URL Mix-Up, Image Ads for Mobile

There have been reports over the weekend that Google have been testing a new layout for their AdWords sponsored links. The listings now show the display URL above the description, in contrast to the traditional format.

AdWords listings have always followed the same format shown below:

The new layout flips the display URL and Ad text:

Also if you take a closer look at the second listing, they also have the display URL and ad text on the same line - something I have never seen before.

Who knows whether this is another Google test or some internal mistcheif at Google, but it would be interesting to see if the new layout effected click through on these listings. I'm just speculating here, but if the URL and Ad text are on the same line, it may also give advertisers more than the 70 character limit for the ad text.

In related news, AdWords advertisers can also now use image ads in their mobile advertising to supplement the text based advertising that's been available for some time now. The image ads work just like the non-mobile version, with the content and size of the image matched to the surrounding text and size of the screen. To learn more check out the post on the Google AdSense blog.

Labels: Google AdWords

Click Fraud on the Way Down, Great News for Advertisers

Click Fraud has reversed an upwards trend to fall for the first time in Q2 2008, with the overall click fraud rate dropping 1.8%. Click Fraud occurs in pay per click advertising when a person or script imitates a regular web user by clicking on an ad in order to cost the advertiser money.

The graphs below indicate the overall click fraud trends according to Click Forensics:

While the overall click fraud rate has risen from the same time last year - the decline may be an indication Google and Yahoo! are making efforts to filter out 'fake' clicks and improve the overall quality of their programs. According to Tom Cuthbert, president of Click Forensics:

"Our Q1 2008 data bears out what industry analysts have suspected for several months - Yahoo! and Google seem to be finally filtering out more of the click fraud and non-converting traffic they used to let through," ... "Removing some of these higher-profile abusers appears to be having an effect on lowering the click fraud rates. If advertisers, publishers and ad networks continue to take proactive steps to filter out this lower quality traffic, the click fraud rate could trend downward even further, and that's good news for the entire industry."

Google in particular have made a few changes over the past year to actively prevent click fraud which included reducing the clickable area in their AdSense ad units. This news is great for online advertisers who can rest easy knowing that advertising platforms are working hard to prevent this type of fraudulent activity.

If you'd like to get started with online advertising, but don't want to worry about issues like click fraud, why not try our Easy Search Advertising program. Your campaign is run by advertising professionals who live and breathe online advertising to ensure you get the best return for your money!

Thursday, April 24

Yahoo! Provides us with Report on Bad Clicks

No one likes 'bad clicks' in their pay-per-click campaign and Yahoo! for quite some time has been throwing out these bad clicks on your behalf.

Now however they have gone one step further and announced a new reporting feature that enables advertisers to see which clicks Yahoo! has deemed to be invalid.

Named the "Click Filter Report" it is available in Yahoo! Search Marketing accounts by selecting the report under the "Traffic Quality Reports" section in the Reports Navigator.

So why did Yahoo! create this report:

* We want to give you as much transparency as we can

* We want to add to the tools at your disposal for monitoring your own traffic.

* We believe our Click Protection System is one of the best in the industry, and we want you to see what it does for your account.

Yahoo! has advised that they typically discard between 12-15% of all clicks. So there is no doubt that this report will be a great advantage for advertisers in tracking if they are being targeted by click fraud perpetrators.

If you're looking to start out in the Yahoo! Search Marketing program but need a little help, then why not give Easy Search Advertising a go. Your Yahoo! campaign will be managed by one of our experienced account managers, who are always up to date with the latest enhancements in the program.

Tuesday, April 22

Yahoo! Updates Search Ranking Algorithm

Yahoo! have released another "weather report" on the Yahoo! search blog to say they are currently updating their crawling, indexing and ranking algorithm. This follows a string of recent updates with the previous change being only last month.

The changes will be rolled out over the next couple of days so during this time there may be some movement in the Yahoo! SERPs (search engine result pages). Webmasters should continue to check their pages over the coming week to see how the update has impacted their rankings.

Also, it should be noted that this update will only affect organic rankings. Your sponsored ads, directory and other Yahoo! listings will remain unchanged.

If your site isn't performing as strongly as you'd like in Yahoo!, there is a handy tool which can help to diagnose some of these problems. Navigate to Yahoo! site explorer and enter the URL you would like to explore.

Here you can see all current pages indexed by Yahoo! as well as how many backlinks these pages have. If you verify your site you can also get access to some more features including the ability to upload an XML sitemap.

Another good idea to improve your ranking is to try professional optimization services like our basic optimization package. Its combination of on-page meta tag optimization and link building has been designed to improve your ranking on Google, Yahoo and MSN. Best of all, its currently on sale for only $47.99.

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this update with other users, simply leave a comment below - we'd love to know what you think.

Labels: Yahoo

DIY Tip: Track Your Conversions

If you're still using the basic statistics software provided with your website hosting - it's time to get real. The online landscape is becoming increasingly competitive and today's webmasters should be using a detailed statistics package to learn how visitors are finding and using their website.

Of course there are a whole range of different stats you need to be tracking, but I wanted to talk about one of the most important - conversion tracking.

What is it?
Conversion tracking simply measures every time a user performs a desired action on your website - whether that's a sale, a signup or a download. It allows you to uncover which clicks are most likely to generate new customers, so you can spend your money most effectively.

Conversion tracking becomes especially important if you're promoting your business with PPC programs such as Google AdWords. It allows you to narrow down your results to a keyword level, to show which exact search terms are generating the best ROI. Once you know which terms are converting the most customers, you can increase your bids on these words to further improve your ROI.

How does it work?
Conversion tracking is easy to implement, you simply install a small snippet of code on specific pages to indicate a transaction has taken place. For example, this could be your order thank you page, or a newsletter signup confirmation page.

When this code is loaded on your site, your statistics program records a transaction has taken place. If you're using Google Analytics, this conversion tracking can also link to your Google AdWords account to be viewed as part of your account statistics.

How do I get started?
To get started, you will need to implement a quality statistics program on your website. The free programs we recommend are:

Both these programs require you to install some code on the pages you want to track and provide an easy way to measure conversions.

Essential DIY Tips from Google

The folks at Google recently posted on their Webmaster Central Blog a great DIY article on some of the best practices when moving your website to a new domain.

This is essential reading for any of you who may be looking at moving your site to a new web address (URL) but don't want to hurt your placing in the Google search results.

The article is written by Riona MacNamara from the Google Webmaster Tool Team and she notes that "your aim is to make the transition invisible and seamless to the user, and to make sure that Google knows that your new pages should get the same quality signals as the pages on your own site."

Here are just some of the tips:

Test the move process by moving part of your site to the new domain first.
If you are rebranding your site also, it may be best to move the site first and then launch the redesign.
Check both internal and external links to pages on your site.
To prevent confusion, retain control of your old site domain for at least 180 days.
Register and verify the new site with Webmaster Tools and submit a sitemap.

Check out the rest of the best practice tips here.

Although moving your website may be not an easy process, the tips from Google should certainly help ensure that your Google reputation doesn't go missing in the process.

Monday, April 21

Google Website Optimizer Gets Full Release

Anyone who uses the internet to generate sales or leads knows that search engine and online marketing means nothing without conversions - which is why Google launched "Google Website Optimizer" in 2006.

Over 12 months later, and Google Website Optimizer has lost its beta tag, and been given full release status with its own website.

So what does Google's Website Optimizer offer for website owners and online business operators?

Online marketing is all about testing and refining, and Google Website Optimizer allows you to test elements of your website or landing page to determine which designs and copy work best.

It simplifies the process of setting A/B or multi variate testing on web pages and tracking the best performing combinations. Here's how Google explains it on their site:

Choose the pages and content to test
Using our web-based interface, provide us with the content -- headlines, images, or text, for example -- and design alternatives that you'd like to test.

Test these changes with your visitors
Website Optimizer will then show these content and design alternatives to your site visitors, all the while monitoring which combinations lead to the highest conversion rates.

Learn what changes drive the most conversions
Our intuitive reports allow even the mathematically-challenged to quickly and easily identify and implement the best combination.

The ultimate goal is to drive up conversions - which means better sales, more leads, less lost visitors and for Google - more advertising spend (hopefully).

Web page testing and optimization should be an ongoing process for all web based small businesses, however the complexity of setting it up and tracking it accurately is generally why it's neglected by most. Google's Website Optimizer should help many small businesses overcome these testing hurdles.

That said, it's hard to test web pages with minimal traffic or low conversion volumes. It's not impossible; it just takes much longer to get accurate indicators on what elements work!

If you're getting strong website traffic, but not seeing the conversions/sales, it's definitely worth checking out Google Website Optimizer, especially given its free!

Friday, April 18

New Free Website Analytics from Yahoo! via IndexTools Acquisition

Last week, Yahoo! announced the acquisition of IndexTools Analytics Business, a hosted website analytics service, in an effort to compete with Google Analytics and Microsoft's AdCenter Analytics (built on the Gatineau platform).

IndexTools provides "accurate, insightful and timely data to help you make informed business decisions about the performance of your website and online marketing campaigns."

The Index Tools product page proclaims: "IndexTools provides the most cost effective Enterprise Web Analytics solution on the market today - Period!"

Given that Yahoo! is now offering the service free to Yahoo! customers, it's extremely cost effective - but does it stack up against Google Analytics or Microsoft's AdCenter Analytics?

Let's look at the feature set as documented on the site:

Executive Dashboards
Provide quickly comprehensible snapshot of key performance metrics, enabling you to set goals, track progress and identify danger points.

Benefit: Acquire control of key business data, allowing you to easily create and customize your dashboard pages according to need.

Path Explorer
Determine your most profitable web links and navigation paths, and identify usability bottlenecks that result in site-abandonment. Optimize your layout and the placement of your call-to-action to increase traffic flow.

Benefit: Analyze the relative popularity of your links and obtain real-time click performance data superimposed on your web pages. Track complex dynamic websites applications, which includes DHTML, flash, redirects, image maps, forms, etc. and have results displayed in an easy-to-use user interface.

Marketing Workflow Management
Monitor events, e.g., website changes, public holidays, system outages, that affect your website, and get a comprehensive analysis of their effects on your website's statistics. Stay in control of your website's performance by setting up customized email alerts for you and your colleagues.

Benefit: Acquire more control and a better understanding of your website's performance through easy to use management features that enhance your viewing and provide you with close monitoring and analysis.

Advanced Live Cost Analysis
CPC Live Cost Analysis pulls together dynamic price information from the leading PPC search engines with the revenue earned on your website. Now IndexTools provides an additional level of reporting accuracy by consolidating the live data collected by the reporting system with data provided by the paid search engines (currently Google and Yahoo!).

Benefit: Measure the ROI of your paid search campaigns, keyword by keyword. Increase revenues without spending more. Resolves data inconsistency between Indextools data and Paid Search reports.

Advanced Campaign Management
Track your marketing campaign results. Associate costs with campaigns - including CPC, CPM and CPA cost models. Define hierarchical categories to organize your report display.

Benefit: Measure the ROI of your marketing campaigns and optimize your marketing budget. Analyze your results across categories you define.

Real-time Segmentation
Analyze how different groups of visitors respond to your campaign landing pages, page layouts, calls to action, and more.

Benefit: Identify your most lucrative visitors and optimize your offer.

Advanced Merchandise Reporting
Track the individual products your customers purchase, add to their shopping cart, and preview. Define categories for your products, and create custom reports. Update your reports to reflect cancelled orders or changes to order amounts by sending API requests to the system.

Perform cross-sell analysis to see how often products are purchased in combination with other products, ranked according to value. Upload your individual products costs and calculate how each campaign contributes to your profits.

Benefit: Increase revenues by identifying and promoting your most profitable products. Identify customer purchasing patterns and optimize your promotional strategy. Stay in control of your website's performance by continuously maintaining your live systems and your website reporting updated.

Scenario Analysis
Analyze the steps your visitors take through any multi-step process, for example a purchase or a form submission. Redefine your process and the changes apply to historical data, too.

Benefit: Troubleshoot your most popular paths to sale, and reduce shopping cart abandonment.

Advanced Path Analysis
Identify the most popular paths your visitors pursue through your website, mapped out in a hierarchical tree structure.

Benefit: The user can expand the branches of this tree to follow visitor movement through as many levels of navigation as needed.

As you can see - it has pretty extensive feature set for a free analytics service (assuming you're a Yahoo! customer).

If you're not already tracking your website and online marketing performance, then the new IndexTools offering seems like a strong contender for your interest. But if you're not a Yahoo! customer - and your tracking needs are fairly fundamental, then Google Analytics makes for a more than adequate alternative.

Wednesday, April 16

Google Serves Up YouTube Videos in Google Maps

If you have been considering using online video for your local business, then now is as good a time as ever!

Google have announced that they have added the ability to include YouTube videos into Google Maps and Local Business Listings.

The news was broken by Julia Li, Google Maps Strategic Partner Manager in the LatLong blog and she gives us an example of a bakery in San Francisco which has already taken up the feature. The example is shown below:

Li explains that "local business owners can easily add YouTube videos along with other content such as business details, photos, and descriptions to their listings. To do so, simply upload your videos to YouTube and ensure that the 'embed' option is turned on. Then, associate your video to your business listing through the Local Business Center."

The videos are then displayed and can be viewed under the "Photos and Videos" tab.

This is certainly a great initiative by Google as it will no doubt add value for local businesses who have local listings in Google Maps, especially if you can include an independent video reviewing your business- a great recommendation opportunity.

If you are yet to harness the potential of a listing in Google Maps targeting your local area then why not try our Local Search Listing, which will not only have your business listed in Google Local, but also 45 other local search engines including Yahoo! Local, Yellow Pages & more.

Monday, April 14

Salesforce integrates Google Apps - Take That Microsoft!

Salesforce, a leading CRM solution provider has announced the release of Salesforce for Google Apps, which will see Google's range of communication and collaboration tools integrated into Salesforce's various customer management applications.

The integration of Google Apps into Salesforce is a lot more than a gimmick move by the CRM leader. It's serious vote of confidence in the Google toolkit, which has been viewed by many in the enterprise market as not apt for serious business use.

As Google aims to dominate Microsoft in markets other than search, the support by Salesforce will help Google make inroads into the application marketplace - a vital alliance for the development of Office 2.0.

According to the Salesforce release post:

"Salesforce for Google Apps is a simple, yet powerful combination of Web-based business applications that streamline communication and collaboration and have the power to change the way you work.

With Salesforce for Google Apps, you can now run your favorite desktop applications and your Salesforce applications side by side by accessing Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Google Docs all seamlessly from within Salesforce."

If you're a Saleforce user, or considering it, watch the video below to see how the Google Tools are integrated into the CRM application.

Now realistically, Salesforce isn't an application that many small business owners will consider using given the costs. But Salesforce's adoption of Google's productivity tools, should be an endorsement that encourages small business owners to consider Google Apps in place of traditional software offerings such as Microsoft Office.

This is a serious coup for Google, as it will give the market that Microsoft has dominated for years a real shake up. Google isn't the only company offering a suite Office 2.0 services (web based business productivity tools), but it's by far the best known.

The biggest obstacle to Google App enterprise usage (or other equivalents) is fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of security, fear of compatibility. Salesforce's integration will be hopefully encourage more businesses to have a second look.