Google AdWords is beta testing demographic bidding for PPC ads on the Content Network in the US and UK.

The new program gives you three new PPC options to make your online marketing pay. AdWords now lets you exclude any group by age and gender, so you're not wasting money advertising to people who aren't your target audience. If you notice that some of your campaigns are converting better for certain demographics, you can now bid more to reach groups that offer a better ROI. And if you don't have a clue which demographic groups are giving you your best returns, you can get reports that show which groups are clicking and converting.

I have been playing around with this feature using different niche sites, and it does seem Google does not have much of this information. That's because they can only gather it from sites in the Content Network that bother collecting it. As they say in their blog post about the program:

Please remember that demographic exclusion does not block your ad from appearing to users of a certain age or gender in every case. It blocks your ad only when a website shares information indicating that the user is a certain age or gender. Many websites don't provide this demographic data, and in those cases your ad will appear to all available users on that website.

However, it is a new opportunity for testing to see how well your online marketing pays. If you're already doing PPC advertising on the Content Network, what the heck? You might want to set up a new campaign and test this out to see if it saves you money, brings your higher conversions, or reveals a market you didn't know you had.

Now you can simply log into your Google AdWords Account, select a campaign and click in edit settings to exclude certain demographics.

Nicole E

If you haven't heard by now, Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo for 44.6 BILLION dollars. So of course it's rumored that Google will outbid MS. What does this mean for SEO and SEM? Too early to tell.

According to industry analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence, a combined Microsoft-Yahoo would improve the companies' respective positions in the search market, but still wouldn't top Google, which has a dominant lead both in search engine usage and advertising.

Allan Krans, an analyst at Technology Business Research Inc. pointed out that by combining forces, Microsoft and Yahoo wouldn't be competing with each other and could concentrate on catching up with Google."Microsoft and Yahoo could combine their best features and try to gain ground on Google as one. Microsoft is trying to drive the popularity of its Windows and Office tools through their online offerings, while Yahoo has popular e-mail services and strength in its [online user] groups. Once people sign up and participate in those groups, it tends to be a very sticky thing. People don't jump around."

From Reuters:

Yahoo Inc would consider a business alliance with Google Inc as one way to rebuff a $44.6 billion takeover proposal by Microsoft, a source familiar with Yahoo's strategy said on Sunday.

Yahoo management is considering revisiting talks it held with Google several months ago on an alliance as an alternative to Microsoft's bid, which, at $31 a share, Yahoo management believes undervalues the company, the source said. Google is not happy about the potential partnership! Separately, Google Inc fired back on Sunday at Microsoft Corp's bid to acquire Yahoo Inc, accusing Microsoft of seeking to extend its computer software monopoly deeper into the Internet realm.

Will we end up with Yahsoft, Microhoo or Yahoogle?

Nicole E
SEO/SEM Expert

Shhh. Keep this one all to yourself!

One of my favorite pay-per-click tools is a spy, and using it is as much fun as lurking behind potted plants and eavesdropping on top-secret conversations.

With a SpyFu subscription, you can quickly get a good idea of the maximum cost-per-click for a keyword. Or you can see what keywords the competition is bidding on -- type in your keyword phrases, your competitor's company name or URL, or your own niche area or industry. But you can also get some good started for free without a subscription!

For both your pay-per-click campaigns and your organic search, you'll be able to garner more ideas on keywords and know what your competitors are up to! You can get a 3-day subscription for only $6.75. A monthly auto-renewing subscription is $38.50.

Here is a visual guide on exactly what Spyfu does (this all came from the free version):

Give it a try!

Nicole Ephgrave
SEO/SEM Expert

In the Search Marketing Lab Newsletter we recommended adding a video sitemap for the search engines.

Google agrees and has recently in Google Webmaster Tools added this in the sitemap section:

Here is some important information from Google when creating your video sitemap:

Here is a sample of a Video Sitemap entry using Video-specific tags:

        xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.0">

   http://www.site.com/videos/some_video_landing_page.html
   
      http://www.site.com/video123.flv
      http://www.site.com/videoplayer.swf?video=123
      My funny video
      http://www.site.com/thumbs/123.jpg
   

http://www.site.com/videos/some_other_video_landing_page.html

http://www.site.com/videos/video1.mpg
A really awesome video

Video-specific tag definitions

	Required	The tag specifies the landing page (aka play page, referrer page) for the video. When a user clicks on a video result on http://video.google.com, they will be sent to this landing page.
	Required
	Optional	The URL of the actual video content.
	Optional	A URL pointing to a player for the video. The most common case for this is with Flash video. The URL of the SWF file that plays your video should be specified in and the URL of the FLV (actual video file) would be specified in . The required attribute allow_embed specifies whether Google can embed the video in the search results on http://video.google.com. Allowed values are "Yes" or "No".
	Optional	A URL pointing to the URL for the video thumbnail image file. If you don't provide a thumbnail image, Google will automatically generate a set of representative thumbnail images from your actual video content. Using this allows you to suggest the thumbnail you want displayed in search results.
	Optional	The title of the video. Limited to 100 characters.
	Optional	The description of the video. Descriptions longer than 2048 characters will be truncated.
	Optional	Whether the video is suitable for viewing by children. Allowed values are "Yes" or "No".
	Optional	The duration of the video in seconds. Value must be between 0 and 28800 (8 hours). Non-digit characters are disallowed.

When creating your Video Sitemap, keep in mind the following:

• A Video Sitemap should contain only URLs that refer to video content. Video content includes web pages which embed video, URLs to players for video, or the URLs of raw video content hosted on your site. If Google cannot discover video content at the URLs you provide, those records will be ignored by Googlebot.
• Each video is uniquely identified by its content URL (the location of the actual video file) or, if a content URL is not present, a player URL (a URL pointing to a player for the video).
• Each Sitemap file that you provide must have no more than 50,000 video items and must be no larger than 10MB when compressed. An individual video file or thumbnail (specified in the and tags, respectively) can be no larger than 30MB. If you have more than 50,000 videos, you can submit multiple Sitemaps and a Sitemap index file.
• Google can crawl the following video file types: .mpg, .mpeg, .mp4, .mov, .wmv, .asf, .avi, .ra, .ram, .rm, .flv. All files must be accessible via HTTP. Metafiles that require a download of the source via streaming protocols are not supported.
• The URLs included in the Sitemap must have their robots.txt file set appropriately for UserAgent "Googlebot".

Having keywords in your domain name or page names is a great tactic to get better search engine rankings.

But remember, if you change your domain name or page names so you can put keywords in them, you need to use the proper redirect for both the search engines and your customers.

Otherwise you'll mess up an even more important SEO element -- you'll lose the inbound links that point to your site and help your page rank and get you traffic. So while you were trying to get better search engine rankings you end up with the short end of the stick, cursing that day you learned about &%$!@^$* search engine strategies.

You need to do a 301 redirect from your old domain name or page name to the new one. A 301 is a permanent, search engine-friendly redirect so you will not have any broken links and all the links pointing to your website will still count. The good news is your web host should be able to help you with it.

This gives you a great opportunity to name your pages something more descriptive or keyword rich, or switch to a better domain name.

Be careful, though. If your customers are very comfortable and used to your old domain name, you're probably better off to keep it as it is! Domain names that are keyword rich are great, but not a huge factor in getting top search engine rankings.

For more on redirects, I love this Wiki post on them for straightforward, useful information.

Nicole Ephgrave

One of the most important aspects of search engine optimization is to build relevant one-way links.

Building one-way links takes time and nurturing. Your first goal should simply be to build up a strong website that people would naturally want to link to. Generate loads of valuable content and you will get inbound links all the time without even trying.

Next you need to analyze your own website and your top competitors' websites to see how many links they have and who those links are from. One of my favorite tools for doing this is Yahoo Site Explorer. It gives you a relatively accurate reading of inbound links to your own and other sites. You can also get a good idea by using Google Webmaster Central and validating your site to get a sampling of who is linking to you.

The worst way to do a check is by going to Google and putting a command like: links: www.mysite.com as this will only give a small sampling of the number of links you really have. So don't panic if you've been using this method.

Just because your competitor has a link pointing to their website does not mean it is a good link.  Do your homework, make sure the site is relevant and complementary to yours and looks like a valuable resource. Check the page rank of the link and make sure it is not grayed -- meaning it is a banned site. If you notice your main competition is using a lot of black hat or spammy techniques to build one way links, report them!

Before you contact a website to get a link, have a plan. What can you offer them? Do they have a blog you can write articles for? This can be one of the best ways, as people are always looking for new fresh blog content! 

Don't be shy. Call them and explain the benefits of using your content.

Take advantage of relationships you already have with suppliers, friends and other people that are in your niche market to get build a strong roster of one way links!

Happy holidays to you and your family!

Nicole Ephgrave

Target your niche market with savvy articles that will help your SEO (search engine optimization) efforts. Articles can be a great way to drive targeted traffic to your website and garner you valuable inbound links from other websites.

The very first rule of thumb when you are writing articles is to look for information that people would currently have trouble finding within your specialty area.

Start by doing your keyword research. Find out what your target market is interested in first... then focus on SEO.

Using a tool like Wordtracker you can easily put in the query box "how to" + "your area of interest" (e.g., how to, cat). That will bring up questions people are asking in that area, including lots you probably haven't thought of.

Scour message boards and Yahoo Answers to think of more ideas and see how your target audience would put a question together. Then back it up with research to make sure others are in the same thought pattern (searching for it). Target the long-tail keywords (not just the word "cat" but "how do I make cat food".)

So I went ahead and did a quick search in the Keyword Research in Wordtracker with the words "how to" + "cat" and up came a ton of article ideas, like "how to help a cat lose weight," which would be spot on if I sold cat food!  See how easy it is to not only help your SEO efforts, but also create valuable content for your target audience?

Once you've got some good questions with long-tail keywords in them, see what information is already out there. Don't waste time writing an article when thousands of other people already beat you to it. That's not going to help your SEO one bit.

Now if you are not a writer you can go to a service like http://www.elance.com or http://www.guru.com to hire one. There are growing numbers of freelance writers who specialize in writing SEO articles these days.

Make sure to write a very detailed description of what you're looking for and how you want your article optimized. Your first goal of creating articles for SEO is to have a helpful sincere approach. No one wants to read paragraphs and paragraphs stuffed full of the same keyword phrase.

Mention to the writer that you want the keyword phrase in the article title and how many times in the body and what other variations of the phrase can be used. Don't forget to tell them the importance of this article being useful and valuable to your target customer. If all you talk about is the SEO importance of it you will get back a poor quality article that only a search engine may love. If your visitor doesn't read it what's the point?

(For more on hiring a writer, see this article from November.)

For SEO purposes I do strongly suggest doing two different versions of the article: one for your website and one for the article directories. Again -- who would want to post your article up on their website if it's just a mess of keywords!

There are hundreds if not thousands of article directories out there. Focus on the article directories that are directly related to your target/niche market and the top directories. These are my favorites of the top article directories:

http://ezinearticles.com
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.buzzle.com
http://www.isnare.com
http://www.articlealley.com
http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.articledepot.co.uk

That's the best way to use SEO for targeting your audience with articles.

Nicole Ephgrave

In September's issue of the Search Marketing Lab Report, I wrote about how to use eBay to get better search engine rankings. I covered in-depth strategies like how to pick the proper keywords, the dos and don'ts of writing your listing, how to use eBay's free pages and Reviews and Guides to best advantage -- plus much more!

Now here's a great resource from eBay 's team. They have done some in-depth investigation using trade magazines, top keyword searches, press releases, best sellers, blogs and past trends to give you the "Holiday Hot List 2007," which predicts what the hottest-selling items will be this year. (Number 1 spot overall? The iPhone.)

They have nicely broken this down by category, from Technology to Health and Beauty.

Take a look and see what you can capitalize on! If you have any of these items, get cracking on your eBay listing and see if you can get some action going with the pay-per-click search engines.

Don't forget to optimize your listings!

Nicole Ephgrave

Is your website prepared for the holiday season? If not you could be losing out on some big money.

After Black Friday -- the first shopping day after Thanksgiving in the US -- comes Cyber Monday, the official start of the online Christmas shopping season. It's a very high traffic/sales period for online retail stores that continues until about a week before Christmas!

Studies have proven that Mondays are a very high sales day in the online retail market. More and more as you can see from the graph below, shoppers are forgetting about the crowds and the parking nightmare at the mall and shopping from the comfort of their own living rooms. The days of waiting in line at the post office for hours are gone too, when you can just order the gift online and have it mailed right to the gift recipient already wrapped and ready to go.

It may not be too late to do some keyword research to ramp up your web pages and your PPC campaign. Use a tool like http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends/ which will give you some Wordtracker data and hook you right up with Google Trends to see how popular this keyword has been in the past so can make the right choice.

Also try the https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal for some quick searches and good history.

Set up a special optimized holiday section and take advantage of some instant pay-per-click traffic. If your site is frequented by the search engine spiders on a regular basis you may be able to squeeze in some rankings but don't depend on it.

Offer gift certificates on your website.

Utilize your email list to send a special holiday promotion.

Swap ads with a complementary website for even more traffic.

See if there is anywhere else you could purchase advertising that is related to your niche market.

Try using Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist to generate more holiday sales.

Send out press releases to get out the word and create a buzz -- another strategy we have covered in detail in the Search Marketing Lab. Are you carrying one of this year's hot items? Does what you sell fit into a big trend? Can you make a top-ten list of great gifts (that you sell, of course) for your typical customer? Write a press release and distribute it via one of these services: Marketwire, PR Web, PrimeNewswire, or PR Newswire.

What about checking out http://www.auctiontips.com to get some great tips on how to successfully sell your products on eBay.

Use incentives your website: free shipping or gift wrapping, card etc. Give visitors a strong reason to purchase from you today!

Last month we covered local search strategies in the Search Marketing Lab Newsletter. This is a perfect time to make sure you have all these points in place if you have a brick-and -mortar retail store. This time of year people will be doing a high number of searches and looking for locations near them to buy their presents.

Whether you're online, offline, or a bit of both, act now!

Wishing you and your family the best of the season,

Nicole Ephgrave

How do you pick your keywords? 

First let's get back to the basics of Internet marketing -- the initial concepts never change. 

I was watching one of the Internet Marketing Center's first seminars with the late and great Corey Rudl. I still find great inspiration in his message every time I watch it.  Derek Gehl is my new big inspiration, carrying forward the message of niche market: don't turn your website into a flea market!

The Internet has two main groups of people. One is there strictly for entertainment, from adult sites to video games, while the other is trying to solve a problem -- a specific problem. Even before you start product development you need to go back to the basics with keyword/market research. Ask yourself, "Are people looking for a solution to the problem that my product solves?" After that, finding the right keywords to optimize your website will a lot easier.

Go for the specific keyword phrases; do not let that big number pull you in, thinking the more people you get to your site the better.  What is the point about bragging about traffic when it doesn't turn into a sale! 

So you have a brand new solution for acid stomach problems that is natural.  You start to do your keyword research and this is what you find:

Do you want to spend all your time and effort trying to optimize for the phrase in Option 1, which has a very high competing number (2,030,000) with about 288 people a day searching for this term in Google but no clear idea to what they are looking for?

Or would you go for the second term with a much lower competing website number but only about 67 a people a day searching for it?

With Option 1, "natural remedies," the possibilities are endless as to what kind of remedy these people are looking for and what specific problems they're trying to solve.

Option 2 is the way to go when you're optimizing your site for the best keywords. People want instant gratification! Focus on the specific long-tail keywords to increase your conversions and search engine rankings. The more specific the better!

Remember Corey's words:  "A niche market is a group of people on the Internet searching for a solution to a problem, but not finding relevant search results."  So when you are optimizing your website with keywords, focus on the problem your website solves!

Nicole Ephgrave

Say you just don't have the time to write copy for your customers and fresh new content to keep the search engines happy, or writing is just not your forte!

So what do you do?  Sometimes you go to someplace like http://www.elance.com or http://www.guru.com to find a writer and you get duped!

They end up giving you an article that have either have already written for someone else or they even found online as public domain. This can hamper your search engine results by rendering it duplicate content so it will not get indexed.  The search engines try to put only one copy of one document in their indexes. Plus it can be content that's just not good enough to help you build inbound links and repeat customers

Your website must have lots of fresh, high-quality content that in turn will help improve your search engine rankings, so here are some tips for finding good contractors:

#1  Take a look at their ratings and feedback comments. You always want to try to pick someone who has a perfect or nearly perfect score. The comments people leave are a good indication if this is a right match for your project.  Read these as well as the score, because people will give high scores but leave scathing comments -- go figure.

Look at how long they have been a provider and what kind of experience they've had. The requirements are different for different kinds of writing. If you want a basic article, a beginner may be OK, but for a press release or salescopy you might want to look for someone with proven experience.

#2  Take some time to write our your request. Try to be as specific as possible as to what your goals are, what you would like them to do, how much time and research may be required on their part, and what you will supply (keywords, research articles etc.). Specify that you require absolutely unique content and say how much you will be willing to pay.

#3  When you get responses, take note if they just sent you an automated response -- which is not so good -- or did they really take the time to read your request and put some time into answering it. This can be a sign of what the quality you get back in return.

#4  Is this provider experienced or knowledgeable in your area? Although not necessary in all situations, this can be helpful when you are making your final decision. 

#5  Set your budget before you post, don't base your decision on the lowest bid.  Sometimes you get what you pay for!

#6  When you get the writing back, use a tool like http://www.copyscape.com to make sure it is unique content and will help improve your search engine rankings!

Google is just getting through another round of PageRank updates (second for this month) and people are now starting to see that little green bar move up or down.

If you have an advertising model, I would strongly advise you to make sure any advertising that you are selling -- especially text links -- is labeled (i.e., "Sponsored by," etc.). And if you are buying links, stay away from link brokers. I strongly advise in the Search Marketing Lab to watch the placement of your link if you are purchasing link text advertising on another site. 

Sites with questionable cross-linking schemes and spammy inbound links seem to be taking a hard hit also.

This has hit some of the big names like Forbes, Washington Post etc.

Sites most penalized are sites selling links, have spammy or questionable inbound links, and are not labeling the links they sell as paid ads.

Some consider PageRank green fairy dust so if you do have a PageRank drop, be more concerned only if your ranking dropped as well.

But take note and backtrack to check what you have done in the last little while to make sure you are adhering to the Search Engine Guidelines. 

I would be interested to hear if this has affected you!

Nicole Ephgrave
SEO/SEM Expert

Google has recently released a new Keyword Analysis page to give you more information when you are hit with a low Quality Score and astronomical pay-per-click rates.

For the average AdWords user, the whole situation used to leave them in a cloud of confusion as to why they were being penalized. They didn't realize how it happened and how to fix it. Now with this tool AdWords will give you recommendation on what to do.

So go to your AdWords account:

How to Access the Keyword Analysis Page
To view the Keyword Analysis page for any keyword, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your account at https://adwords.google.com.
2. Click a campaign.
3. Click an ad group.
4. Click the 'Keywords' tab above the Ad Group Details table.
5. Click the magnifying glass icon beside any keyword to launch the Keyword Analysis page. You can also see an overview of your Quality Score and ad visibility by pointing your cursor over the icon

For more information go to the Google AdWords Blog

Nicole Ephgrave

Do you just sell to someone once and NEVER contact them again. Come on! Eighty percent of your sales is usually made up by just 20% of your customers.

Always look for new problems that you can help your audience solve so you can sell to them again.

Every website should have a search box on it that allows customers to put in their query right on your site. This gives you priceless market research.

1. First, you can find out what problem statements they're using to search for things they expect to find on your site. Then you can use those problem statements as keywords. Sprinkle them through your site, use them in your PPC ads, and build articles or other pages around these terms once you see patterns forming.
   
2. Second, you'll discover great ways to improve your current product if people continuously search for something it does not do or have.
   
3. Third, you'll get ideas for backend products or opt-in bait or bonus offers.

Google's Free Analytics program just announced it will soon include a feature that will let you know what people are searching for internally on your website. It will work with Google Mini, Google Search Appliance, Custom Search Engine, and other Google and non-Google site search tools. More detail will become available soon -- they just released this in beta, and it will be available worldwide very soon!

Or you can easily just Google "site search box" to get started right now!

Nicole E
SEO/SEM Expert

Google AdSense and blinkx have now released further ways to make money with video. In February's Search Marketing Lab Report we discussed how you can optimize your videos to get better search engine rankings. Now you can also make a profit from showing videos or video AdSense!

With Google AdSense, all you have to do is copy and paste a piece of code they give you and relevant video content will be streamed onto your website. You have the ability to choose the videos or just have them automatically targeted to your niche. Just like normal AdSense, you can adjust the formatting and make them blend in with the color code of your website.  Click here for more information.

The popular video search engine blinkx has a new widget called AdHoc, so when you are sharing videos on your blog, website, or anywhere else you can make some money. They have created a system that matches in-text video ads to any video. Brilliant!

Straight from blinkx:

How does it work?

blinkx AdHoc rewards you for sharing videos. Next time you embed a video from a video-sharing site, simply run the embed code through blinkx AdHoc first to start making money. When you add the embedded video it will have contextually relevant ads placed near or on it. If your viewers click on these ads the advertiser pays blinkx and blinkx will share 50% of that revenue with you.

Which video sites work with AdHoc?

We plan to support all of them. At the moment, we've tested the following and know they work: MySpace, GoogleVideo, YouTube, Revver, Metacafe, Veoh, DailyMotion, Break, FunnyOrDie and CollegeHumor. If you know of another sharing site that you'd like us to support, just email us at adhoc@blinkx.com. Remember, it has to be a site that supports embedding for it to work with the system.

For more information click here

Let us know how much you are raking in!

Nicole E