We knew it was coming. Today, Yahoo Search Marketing announced their “search alliance” with Microsoft.
What’s that mean?
Well… I’ve been using Yahoo Search Marketing for several months now, and find that the cost of an identical campaign that I had running at AdWords was half the price. And, for whatever reason, my optins doubled. I didn’t change the page… I changed the advertiser. So, in that respect, it’s been working very well for me.
My switch to Yahoo came on the heels of watching Frank Kern and Trey Smith’s “Screw Google” course, which I think is totally apropos. Why not? They think nothing of screwing us all the time. And almost anything works better for PPC when it comes to Internet marketing these days. continue reading »
So, today’s Christmas Eve, and I’m cleaning in preparation for tomorrow. The in-laws will be over, and I always cook a big dinner for Christmas. It’s a big change for me from thinking about marketing, managing the ListBuilding Club, on-page and off-page optimization, what’s new, and what I’ve missed and need to catch up with…
That’s it! I’m going back to my feminine roots. (At least until Monday.)
I haven’t done that for a couple of years now, since my husband retired. He didn’t do it voluntarily. He was in the car business for more than 30 years and all of a sudden, the doors closed. The business dried up, there were no jobs for a guy over 50, and luckily, I had started this Internet marketing thing and was working for Tellman. continue reading »
Just read an article by Danny Sullivan, musing on the release of Google’s personalized search. He feels the same way as I do. Google put the announcement in a teeny little blog post and didn’t really make any huge announcement. The Google ghods just put it into operation, hoping we wouldn’t notice. It’s kind of like that health care bill they’re forcing through after hours, eh? Messing with people’s income and nobody is supposed to be worried. hmm…
A lot of SEOs are running around like chickens saying that SEO is dead. I don’t believe that. I think it’s radically changed, but not at all in the last throes of life. So, what can we do to make personalized search good for our businesses?
Another view
Rand Fishkin (randfish), CEO and co-founder of SEOMoz.org wrote a great post about personalized search, its impact, and what we can do to continue boosting rankings.
In terms of impact, he says that rank checking will be less accurate. That’s a no-brainer. You can’t possibly figure out where your site will show up on an individual’s search results page. continue reading »
For those of you who love Twitter, but who are also marketing mavens, you’ll be really interested in a new application that I found out about today. It’s called “Market Me Tweet,” and instead of having your tweets say, “From TweetDeck” or “From FriendFeed” or whatever, what if they could say “From Your Business Name” with a link to your business?
How cool is that?
I tried it out today, and it totally rules.
The set up isn’t click and do, unless you’re already really Twitter techy and have set up apps before, but there’s a great video that walks you through the process, step-by-step. After watching that, it’s really a no-brainer.
So, you open the little app on your desktop and voila! Tweet and brand, my friends. Tweet and brand.
Today, I was over at Digital Point, checking out what was going on and there’s a big discussion of a page rank update. People are complaining that their page ranks went up or down for no apparent reason, and it’s freaking them out.
But you know, … Does it really matter?
Here’s what matters: Your site showing up in the results pages. That’s what matters.
I’ve said this before: Page rank is a way for Google to play with your head.
If you have PR6, Google decides it hates paid linking and BOOM! PR0. Happened last year.
If you have a PR3, it’s better than a PR2… why? You have no more listings today than you did yesterday. Who cares?
What you should watch and care about are these things: continue reading »
In a news article at Telegraph.co.uk yesterday, Google’s vice president for search products and user experience, Marissa Mayer, says that Google is getting ready to have the ability to translate search results into any language, and to have the sites translated for you when you click through.
So, if someone in the U.S. searches a topic and the results include information from a German newspaper, the results would be in English, rather than German, and when you actually got to the site, it would also be in English rather than German.
That feature alone would have helped me when I researched materials for my biographies of the The Dalai Lama and Mohandas K. Gandhi. That might have been pretty sweet, but translations aren’t always up to par. Yet, that’s just one area where they’re making advances.
Mayer says that in the last 70 days, there have been 38 new search products that she has overseen. That’s pretty danged aggressive, no?
I’ve had kind of a rough day today, and I’m really tired. Not your problem, right? No, it’s not, and in my effort to produce solid content for you every day, I’m going to rely on something some good friends of mine wrote about their new product. Here’s the skinny:
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We’ve all had bad days as marketers, but some are much worse than others. While bad luck happens and poor sales days aren’t uncommon, sometimes something much more sinister is at play. There are hackers and script-running marketers out there to steal your affiliate commissions, and it could be costing you thousands of dollars, every year. These unethical marketers operate through spyware and secret ad programs, which automatically convert affiliate links into their own, stealing your commissions and earning them cash.
It’s highly unethical, and it gives real marketers a bad name. While you put in the hard work creating landing pages, mastering PPC campaigns, and building dedicated SEO resources, these leeches are out there coding their bots, ready to steal your hard work and turn it into their own conversions. While affiliate networks fight against this sort of behavior, there’s little that they can do. After all, the traffic looks the same, and the sales are genuine. It’s just the method that’s horribly unethical.
Of course, there are two ways to deal with the problem. The first is to get mad about the situation and try to fight the leeches head on. You can report them, follow them, and tell other affiliates about them. While it certainly makes things more difficult for them, it’s not a solution that’s going to bring you any more sales. Hackers are sharp, and always looking for a new solution. When you call them out, they simply run away and build a better bot. continue reading »
So yeah… Saturday night was something that only an Internet marketer could dream about.
Really.
Matt Bacak had a birthday party for Mark Joyner and 120 people were invited. If your name wasn’t on the list, you were out, baby. I was both honored and delighted that my name was on that list. I know it was thanks to Tellman, but hey… I got to be there!
(If you really hate gushy stuff, now it’s time to stop reading. Thanks for coming. I can’t help it. I’m totally psyched!)
Think of any big-time marketer and he or she was probably there. Stephen Pierce showed up, just for the party. And the usual suspects were there. People who had already presented, people going to present on Sunday, and some friends of mine like Carrie Wilkerson (the Barefoot Executive) and Perry Lawrence (Ask Mr. Video) and folks I’ve come to know through Tellman like Ric Thompson (HealthyWealthynWise.com) and Harris Fellman. And other folks I didn’t recognize, but if they were at the party, I guarantee they were smart marketers. It was awesome! I never, ever, ever dreamed I’d be in a room with people I looked up to for so long. continue reading »
and 
. That might have been pretty sweet, but translations aren’t always up to par. Yet, that’s just one area where they’re making advances.
