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Search Engine Roundtable

• 

  Trademark Issues: What SEMs Should Know

  Posted: August 21st, 2008, 10:43pm CEST by rustybrick

  Tags:  Search Engine Strategies 2008 San  

  In 2008, U.S. paid search advertisement revenue is expected to reach 15.52 billion. This represents a 31.9% increase over 2007. Despite this tremendous growth, uncertainty in recent court developments may discourage search engine marketers from purchasing keywords that are trademarked by others for fear of being found liable for trademark infringement. The presentation will include a discussion of the state of the law as well as legal ways to use another's trademark to enhance your visibility on the web.
  
  Moderator:
  · Jeffrey Rohrs, Vice President, Marketing, ExactTarget
  
  Speakers:
  · Mark J. Rosenberg, Esq., Sills Cummis & Gross P.C.
  · April Wurster, Attorney, Baker & McKenzie
  · Eric Goldman, Assistant Professor & Director of the High Tech Law Institute, Santa Clara University School of Law
  
  Jeffrey Rohs introduces all the panelists.
  
  Eric: Normally I have a strong biased opinion that I am going to try to keep in check. My goal is to outline a bit of trademark law in keyword advertising.
  
  Trademark infringement is a popular topic. There are 4 elements of a claim in court:
  
  1. Ownership of valid trademark.
  2. Priority
  3. Use in commerce in connection with the sale of goods services. There words come out of a statute. If the advertiser buys the trademark as a keyword but doesn't use the keyword in the ad copy, there's a huge split in opinion on whether or not this infringes on a trademark. We also have a geographic split – in New York it appears to be no, in the rest of the country it appears to be yes.
  4. Likelihood of consumer confusion. A couple of courts say that if there is a purchase of a keyword without the keyword in the ad copy, it does not confuse the consumers. Another court says that consumers will always be confused and the plaintiff should always win. So we don't really have judges with consistent opinions. If consumers are confused, there are a variety of defenses; referencing the trademarked owner. In the Tiffany vs. Ebay case, Ebay was buying advertising on Tiffany trademarked products, and was excused because the use was nominative – "Ebay is a great place to buy tiffany products".
  
  Some other regulations:
  
  - State anti-keyword law: Utah spyware control act and a law in Alaska against popups. Neither of these statutes are dormant though.
  - There was a frontal assault on keyword advertising in Utah, that was designed to ban keyword advertising, an assault on our entire industry. Utah screwed up a second time and they repealed the law.
  
  Search engine trademark policies: the gist is that Yahoo and MSN have banned certain types of keyword ad buys based on the trademarks. As you know Google allows bidding on trademarked keywords, but does not allow reference of the trademark in the ad copy. This may be more helpful.
  
  I am not a big fan of the trademarked policies. The cost of litigating is so expensive.
  
  Jeffrey: Next up is April Wurster, a practicing attorney in the arena.
  
  April: Good morning. I will talk to you about how a trademark owner can protect their rights.
  
  First you want to know who is using your trademark, monitor your trademarks. There are some companies out there that do this. They are relatively inexpensive; they range from $200 – $500.
  
  The second thing you can do when you find out if someone is using your trademark is send them a cease and desist letter. But talk to your attorney about this because it can get complicated. If it's strongly worded, the accused infringer can file a lawsuit against you and they then become the plaintiff. So be careful.
  
  You can also file lawsuits, which we will talk more about later, and you can also address trademark concerns without going to court.
  
  Google trademark complaint procedures:
  
  US, UK, Ireland and Canada: won't investigate in keywords, but only in ad text.
  Outside the US, UK, Ireland and Canada: will investigate usage in both keywords and ad text.
  
  Google's complaint procedure is very easy, you can fill out an online form. Yahoo has the opposite procedure; they don't allow users to bid on trademarked keywords. Ebay has a complaint procedure, it's called the VeRO program (Verified rights owner) and they can and will kick people out. You just fill out a form, it's easy, you don't need an attorney.
  
  So what if the self-help programs don't work for you? You might need to file a law suit. When an attorney looks at your case, there are a lot of different factors, but they will look at the type of trademark you have – common law, state registration, or federal. Common law trademarks are free and extremely limited – so you get what you pay for. They don't get any of the presumptions you get with federal regulations, like validity. State registration is a good alternative, very cheap, about $70, compared to federal which is $325, and you can get it fairly quickly. But they are limited geographically to the state where you register.
  
  If you are really motivated to protect your property rights you should be seeking federal registration. Some advantages:
  
  1 – you get nationwide notice of rights
  2 – you can get increased damages
  3 – if you use your trademark exclusively for 5 years,, it can become incontestable, meaning that certain challenges against your mark are taken away from the defendant.
  
  How to use your mark so you don't abandon or misuse:
  
  - Always use proprietary notices: "this TM is registered"
  - Distinguish your mark in print perhaps use it in all caps, or use it with the first letter as the capital (though don't use it is a proper noun because then it becomes generic. For example, Escalator lost trademark rights because they used it as a noun, and now an escalator is the generic word for "moving stairs"). Also don't use it as a verb, like Xerox, you should use it as an adjective, like Xerox copier.
  - Never change your mark. So if you update or modernize your mark, be cautious of the trademark implications.
  
  Thank you.
  
  Jeffrey: Next is Mark Rosenberg
  
  Mark: Bad news: marketers can use your trademark. There are limits though on how they can use it. My goal today is to give you those limits.
  
  Trademark use is prohibited if it causes confusion. But there are ways you can use it. The issue of what is and isn't likely to cause confusion - just ask yourself the question, why am I using someone else's trademark?
  
  - To identify a genuine product or service.
  - To let users know you are offering a product or service.
  - To make a comparison between your product and another, for example, you are marketing a generic version of a product.
  - There is no other readily identifiable way of identifying the trademarked product or service.
  
  Infringement:
  
  - To get a search engine listing when your website was nothing to do with the trademarked product.
  - To get a more prominent organic listing when your website has nothing to do with the trademarked product.
  - To get more traffic to your site.
  - To divert a competitor's traffic to your site.
  
  If you have the right answer to why am I using this trademark, here are some permitted uses:
  
  - When your website sells the genuine trademarked product
  - In a meta tag when the website sells the genuine product
  - In a meta tag when the website sells the generic version of the trademarked product
  
  Limits on use:
  
  You can say, "We have the best prices on Rolex watches", or "Our burgers are better than McDonalds", or, "We sell the generic version of Lipitor".
  
  You can't use the trademark more than necessary (Viagra Viagra Viagra Viagra), or in a more prominent form than necessary (We sell VIAGRA). You can not overly exclaim a trademark (We are not Orbitz, We are not Orbitz, We are not Orbitz). You can't use a trademarked logo instead of the word and you can't falsely claim sponsorship.
  
  Domain names: It's usually a bad idea to use a trademark in a domain name. Don't do it.
  
  A new use is when a marketer writes about a product or service, and this comes up in the search listings results, when it has nothing to do with the site. The articles are usually written to drive traffic to the site. I have not seen any case law, but it will get the person in trouble.
  
  Jeffrey: Thanks Mark, thanks guys, this has been a great overview. Now we'll open it up to Q&A.
  
  Session coverage provided by Sheara Wilensky of Promediacorp.

• 

  Fast, Free and Easy Tools to Get You Going

  Posted: August 21st, 2008, 10:32pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

  Tags:  Search Engine Strategies 2008 San  

  This session will focus on free and low-cost tools that can help beginners get started with their search and online marketing campaigns. The speakers will all reveal their favorite "tools on a budget." This session is geared for beginners to help them to understand the areas they need to tackle first and which tools are available to help them increase rankings and drive sales, so they can afford to move to higher-level tools that require subscriptions or hefty investments.

  Moderator:
  Jennifer Laycock, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Guide

  Speakers:
  Matt McGee, Director of Strategic Search, KeyRelevance
  Scott Allen, CEO, Hybrid6 Studios
  Joe Abraham, VP of Marketing, SageRock

  
  Matt McGee
  Don’t let the tools make the decisions for you, but use the tools to get information so you can make the decisions.

  SEO Tools: Firefox and Friends

  • SEO for Firefox http://tools.seobook.com for Google and Yahoo, it gives you lots of information under each listing in the SERP. Gives you page rank, age of domain, inlinks, where it has listings, etc.
  • Search Status [www.quirk.zib] Provides some of the same data as SEO for Firefox. Instead of providing it in the SERPs, provides as you’re looking at an individual page.
  • SEO Quake Lot of people use it, but Matt doesn’t like how it slows down the browser.

  Keyword Research

  • Keyword Discovery. [www.keyworddiscovery.com]. Shows search frequency of queries. URL is to free version.
  • SEO Book Tool [tools.seobook.com]. Tons of information here.

  Backlink tools

  • Site Explorer. [https:] One of the best backlink tools if you don’t verify the site with the search engines, Google doesn’t give nearly comprehensive results for sites.
  • Link Diagnosis [linkdiagnosis.com] Gives backlinks, anchor text, if it’s nofollow, lots of other data, repackages from Yahoo.

  Link Building Tools

  • Hub Finder [www.linkhounds.com] gives top ranking sites for the keyword, then gives sites that link to these sites.
  • Traffic Marks [www.trafficmarks.com].

  PPC Tools

  • Local Keyword List [5minutesite.com] provide zip code, radius, and keywords. Looks up zip code database, concatenates list of keywords with city locations.

  Domain Tools

  • Domain Tools [www.domaintools.com] Whois record, title, meta description, internal and outbound links, dmoz listing, etc. etc. etc.

  Spider Tools

  • SEO Browser [www.seo-browser.com]. Gives additional info about links, page load times, etc.

  
  Scott Allen

  Competitive Research
  Compete.com

  • Free tools let you compare traffic with competitors and get limited keyword data
  • Premium tools provide detailed data on what keywords are driving traffic to specific competitors.
  • Even though best data isn’t free, good site to have on your radar.

  Google Trends for websites

  • Similar to some of compete’s tools, but less in-depth
  • Shows info about other sites’ traffic
  • Regions visitors are from
  • Other sites visited
  • Keywords that other sites’ visitors have search for
  • Can be used to
  • Derive who competitors are
  • See some top keywords driving traffic to competitor sites
  • Drill down and analyzer further

  Spyfu

  • Excellent PPC data for competitors
  • Find data by domain or keyword
  • Find out what competitors are spending on PPC and see ad data
  • Find out what keywords they rank for and are bidding on
  • Ability to drill down and download data for further analysis
  • SpyFu UKI recently launched

  Google Insights for Search

  • Google provides data specifically for marketers based on what people are searching for
  • Decipher trends
  • Locate appropriate regional markets
  • Determine best messaging/phrases based on search data. Helps you determine what types of messages will be best received.
  • Find competitors in your market

  Competitious

  • Store data about competition
  • Create matrix to compare competitor features / attributes
  • Pulls in RSS feeds
  • Pulls in search results
  • Clip and save anything that looks interesting from search or blog feeds

  Wordpress as an SEO tool
  Note: refers to Wordpress on your own domain, not the wordpress.com.

  • Popular blog platform
  • Well suited for SEO, even right out of the box. Modifications can help make it even better.
  • Many plugins available to expand functionality
  • Can be used by beginners/experts
  • Free: download at wordpress.org
  • Installs in minutes

  Wordpress SEO benefits

  • Helps user create basic optimized content even with little SEO knowledge
  • Once setup all you have to do is write (for best results 2-5 times a week)
  • Building links and awareness (ping)
  • Social Media Marketing plugins and friendly content

  Recommended settings

  • Search engine friendly URL’s
  • Settings -> permalinks -> month and name (or something more friendly than numbers)
  • Indexable by search engines
  • Settings -> privacy -> blog visibility “I would like my blog to be visible
  • Communication with other blogs
  • Settings -> discussions (look for way to ping)

  Plugins: Caveats. Some plugins may not work with different version of WordPress. For security/integrity only download from author’s site or wordpress.org.

  Where to find wordpress plugins. [wordpress.org]. Type exact name into search box (of plugins listed in this presentation

  All in One SEO Pack

  • On-page (Content) SEO benefits
  • Optimizes Title Tags (still important to write keyword rich yet natural headlines)
  • Prevents many duplicate content issues
  • Generated meta description tags automatically

  Internal Linking Important to improve internal linking throughout blog.
  Wordpress related posts

  Pagination Most blog platforms are weak in this area and requires a plugin to fix (both navigation and ranking issue). Adds page numbers.
  WP-PageNavi

  Social Media makes it easier for site visitors to submit your content to social media sites or vote for your content
  Sociable

  RSS Feed. Feeds are published but rarely optimized with out-of-the-box blog software
  RSS footer: easily add copyright notice and other stuff.

  Caching: Traffic spikes can cause server to buckle under the load (dig, etc.). Don’t want site down long time for both users and search engines
  WP Super Cache

  
  Joe Abraham

  Google Keyword Suggestion

  • https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
  • Now gives you approximate search volume!
  • Search by specific term
  • Let Google Suggest terms by URL
  • Shows approximately how competitive the term is.
  • See what Google thinks our site is about, see what it thinks other (competitor) sites are about.

  WordTracker

  • http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
  • Up to 100 phrases
  • Each term with an approximate search count

  Keyword Discovery

  • http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
  • Up to 100 free terms with estimated search volumes

  Microsoft adCenterLabs

  • http://adlab.msn.com/
  • Free Demographics Tools! Comes from when people are logged into Microsoft products.
  • Input a URL or a List of Phrases; Get Predicted Demographics Back!
  • Demographics Prediction Tool. Gives you an idea of who is visiting that website, gender, age range.
  • Keyword Forecast Tool

  XML Sitemaps

  • SitemapDoc.com (up to 500 pages)
  • XML-Sitemaps.com
  • Google Webmaster Central

  What’s an XML Sitemap?

  • An XML file that lists all of the pages on your site that you want indexed
  • Lists relative importance of pages
  • Allows engines an easy way to find pages
  • Does not guarantee inclusion. NOT an excuse to use bad code, just because a page is in the site map doesn’t mean it will be included in the index.
  • Google, Yahoo and MSN all support this protocol

  Google Webmaster Central

  • Directly submit your XML sitemap to Google
  • Once verified, gain access to some Google Data on your site
  • Content Analysis
  • Top Search Queries
  • Web Crawl Statistics
  • Can be added to iGoogle
  • Has great way to check robots.txt file. You can put in a URL and see if it would be excluded.

  Usability
  Crazy Egg is a Heat Mapping Tools

  • Visual Stats program
  • Creates different visual overlays of site with statistics. Gives some different information than Google Analytics heatmap
  • Creates heat maps. Use of color indicates activity

• 

  Special Kelsey Group Presentation: The 3G iPhone: Local Search Demos

  Posted: August 21st, 2008, 10:27pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

  Tags:  Search Engine Strategies 2008 San  

  By the time SES San Jose rolls around, we will have seen a torrent of application development for the 3G iPhone. Mobile local search will finally get its due, with built-in GPS functionality, combined with a feature set and price point that are mainstream-friendly. This session will get a first-hand look at how companies in the local search space are making good use of the iPhone's open development standards. Whether the search is for a restaurant, a flat screen television, or a crescent wrench, we'll see the applications that will lead the way for the next generation of local search on the mobile device.
  Moderator:

  * Michael Boland, Senior Analyst, The Kelsey Group

  Speakers:

  * Ethan Lowry, Co-founder, UrbanSpoon
  * Scott Dunlap, CEO, NearbyNow
  * Ryan Sarver, Director of Consumer Products, Skyhook Wireless
  * Siva V. Kumar, Founder & CEO, TheFind.com
  * Sonia McFarland, Head of Business Development, Yelp

  
  Mobile local search is becoming more mainstream with new smarter phones like the iPhones. Third party application development is a great initiative moving forward in local mobile search.

  First up is Ryan Sarver from Skyhook.

  Skyhook is a behind the scenes product. GPS has been around on phones, but not used for location based apps till recently. Skyhook does Wi-fi based positioning. Instead of satellites for reference, uses 56,000,000 Wi-fi access points to identify location. Needs density to work - urban and indoor areas. Uses triangulation.

  Consumer ready location - can return location much faster than GPS. Works indoors, and in cell phone dead spots.

  Shows video of Steve Jobs plugging the product!

  Looked at the apps in the store, and identified which Apps using GPS. Huge amount of apps using location, even AP news to serve local news.

  Next up is Ethan from Urban Spoon.

  Helps people find restaurants using the mobile phone. Pulls together reviews from critics, bloggers, etc. Wondered how could use search engines to create a business without spending a dime on marketing. On the web, Google and others are the natural gateway to find info on the web. Different story on the phone. Challenge to get traffic on phone without spending much money. Along comes the iPhone with location awareness.

  The app store looks like the net looked years ago. Only a few thousand apps. Small pool. Can get noticed easier. Wanted to make something that would be fun and practical and toy like. The problem set to solve was indecision where to eat. The idea was to create a magic 8 ball to find a restaurant. The publicity has been great thus far, and over 500,000 downloads. A quick demo - first identifies location. Shake the phone and spins a slot machine that suggests a restaurant. Can tailor experience by price, cuisine, location. Keep shaking it to find a restaurant you like, and then shows you more info such as reviews, phone number, map, address, email to friend, and tweet. Not truly random, skewed based on popularity of restaurant. Also a social element to see what your friends like.

  Scott from NearByNow is up next.

  Nearbynow takes product data from stores across the US and geolocates them. Has a concierge service that will have someone call the store to locate the product. Developed two iPhone apps around this. One is a shopping mall map application. Common among iPhone users is to take photos of products in malls and get feedback from friends. iPhone users are in a higher income bracket, are more fashion forward, and more likely to buy products at full price. Business model is driving leads to stores.

  With the new app, you can take a photo of friends trying items on, store displays, etc. and can send to a contact group with a message. When taking the photo, it identifies the store using the location based feature. Retailers get excited when see what people are photographing in their stores. Lots of photos of people asking interesting questions such as "is this girl cute", "should I ask him out". Works on other phones besides iPhones. Other features include locating products in other stores, and similar products based on tags.

  Siva from TheFind.com is up next.

  TheFind.com is a search engine. What they do is shopping search that comprises local and online products. They have a crawler that only looks at shopping sites. Crawl them very deeply, and there are 500,000 approximately. Index has roughly 250 million products. Also crawls the address location of the stores. Map the products with the store locations. Can search for "ugg boots" in Cupertino, etc. You can use the site as a Yellow pages or check inventory from Krillion and Nearbynow's concierge service.

  Application for iPhone is still being approved, not out yet. First thing the app does is take the location of the phone. Then maps all the stores around you. Then can conduct a search. The map changes and shows store icons that carry the product. Also has comparison price feature built in, where you can cross reference eBay and other retailers.

  Sonia from Yelp is up last.

  Yelp is a local content community network site, as well as review site. 3.5 million reviews.
  Restaurants are 1/3 of content. Boutiques, cafes, spas, and other types of business are the bulk.

  Demos the iPhone app. Searches "coffee wifi". Shows results sorted by distance. Get photo of the business, and status if still open. Can browse reviews. User activity is a big part of who to trust when reading reviews. Alternatively, you can use maps to browse local businesses. Can filter search results by distance, price, etc. Next she queries "hair salon San Francisco". Shows us filtering by neighborhood feature.

  That's all.

  Contributed by Avi Wilensky of Promediacorp.

• 

  Special Kelsey Group Presentation: Local 2.0: The Evolution of Local Search

  Posted: August 21st, 2008, 9:29pm CEST by rustybrick

  Tags:  Search Engine Strategies 2008 San  

  What percentage of online searches are local? If you consider searches that end up having some influence on local buying activity, the opportunity is put into perspective. But there are still large gaps between the point of search and the point of purchase. How are online mapping, shopping engines, and directories starting to fill these gaps with user-generated content, video, or inventory data that funnel searchers towards local businesses? And how can marketers utilize these tools to get local searchers to pick up the phone, schedule appointments, or show up at their stores?
  Moderator:
  Michael Boland, Senior Analyst, The Kelsey Group
  Speakers:
  Ian White, CEO, Urban Mapping
  Peter Hutto, VP, Business Development & Sales, Local.com
  Joel Toledano, Co-founder & CEO, Krillion
  Steve Espinosa, CEO, eLocal Listing, LLC
  Meredith Papp, Product Marketing Manager, Google

  Local is a huge market opportunity with lots of challenges. Very fragmented, and lots of different companies emerging and improving the space.

  Peter Hutto is first up to speak.

  Strategy for Local.com is aggregation. Pulling content, functionality, and advertising from different places.

  Most of the big players are all in the space - trying the same combination of strategies.

  Engagement: Ratings and reviews. The big thing now is video, lead by Citysearch, 24 months ago. Every big player has a video initiative right now.

  Technology: All the major directories, yellow pages, etc. are changing algorithms to cater to a local model.

  Data initiatives - lots of local neighborhood info.

  Functionality - mapping, shopping.

  Google - most of us get our traffic from Google, so it's important to play the game figuring out the organic and paid side .

  Core challenges - it's a fragmented and messy market. Huge market opportunity, but no single face.

  A look at players in the space.

  Oodle- doing a great job at classifieds.
  Krillian- local big box retailers with product availability.
  Nearbynow- covers the mall vertical.
  Stepup- store inventory and promotion for small businesses.
  Kriyari- customize online malls for major retailers.
  Shopping.com- traditional portal.

  Ian White is up next.

  Comes from the printed map space. Where he started.

  What percentage of queries are local? 80% of dollars are spent near the home. Up to 40% of queries are local - maybe. Data is a bit out dated. Came from an AOL study. Roughly 5% of search terms have the city or state. 2% of queries leverage neighborhood boundaries. .05% search terms use ZIP codes.

  An early example of user generated content was a bunch of printed documents by two law students name the Zagats in the late 70's (of Zagat.com). Didn't do the work themselves. Packaged others reviews. Not something new, but good example.

  Original local search - the Yellow Pages. Factoid - Why are they yellow? Because they ran out of white paper. 1857 was the first directory for local merchants.

  Local search to do list - 1) take lessons from past 2) Get the data right (insights, spatial, and inventory) 3) Long tail geo modified keywords.

  Geotargetting currently sucks. Bid on long tail geo modified keywords. Allows to target in a more granular way.

  Thank you!

  Joel from Krillion is up next.

  Krillion does real time location based product search. Different from online search and online purchasing to the extent that they are completed in physical stores near the consumers. Work with manufacturers, retailers, publishers, and search engines. Reach the consumer who is researching online, and will go out to buy the products. Cover the major big box retailers. Over 1 billion SKUs! Has 85% US market share across the different categories.

  Key is that consumers research online and buy offline. 95%+ of all commerce transacted is in a physical store. 72% of the research is done online.

  Where are consumers researching? Manufacturer's sites. Retailer sites, search, and shopping engines. Go to a variety of sources so need to spread information everywhere.

  Several years ago, this data did not exist. Krillion powers "in stock" availability for sites. Constant updates of inventory and prices. Real time in store product available. Key to lead gen and driving real time sales is real time data.

  A case study: Panasonic - power the "where to buy" feature. Used to be a consumer dead end - just could research data. Now they can show you where to get the products and allow online purchases - with in store pickup. Great for mom and pop stores without websites. CTR's of over 70% have been shown. Quite significant for retailers.

  25% of the time, products are out of stock or not located near the consumer. Last month, rolled out a product which now recommends related products that may be in stock. No more consumer dead ends.

  Distribution network - launching with 2 major search engines soon. Powers a new iPhone app with all their data called "The Find".

  Steve Espinosa is up next.

  Local listings should stand out in rankings. Goal is to get lots of 5 star reviews.

  Merchant verification - showed a 1.8x increase in calls for a client with a merchant verification icon.

  You want to scan and analyze the Google and Yahoo! result sets. Often you will see local portals in the top 10 results. Instead of trying to outrank, take advantage of this and optimize on the local portals and engines.

  Link to your local listing from your website. Use anchor text with a good key phrase. Google is more likely to rank a source like Yahoo! Local rather than your website if your site is new and has little to no links.

  Video - SEO, conversions, and citations. Likes to create small commercials for customers.
  When creating video for clients, create a new page on your site. Surround it with the same description or tags you would submit to Youtube. Standard optimization of the page. Send links to your Youtube videos. Will see videos get included in universal search. Video optimization is still in its infancy. Can take advantage of this.

  Enquiro has a study showing that companies received 2.2x more attention on the results page if the company had Adwords and organic results on the same page. Their research shows that 3.34x more likely if there is a video on the page.

  Web references - Local listings are not usually linked to. Rely on scanning the web, and see how many times the business is mentioned on the web, and that's counted as web reference. Videos can be attributed as web references if you do proper linking.

  Research your competitors and look at their web references. Go there to create web references. The source of the citation matters. "Amount" of web citations does not guarantee rankings.

  Bonus tip - free phone tracking by Google. Create an audio campaign - go through the process - right at the end there is a "call reporting" link - where you can generate up to 20 unique phone numbers. Can use the call tracking feature without charge now, it's a hole in the system. Don't need to complete the ad creation process to take advantage of list.

  Next up is Meredith from Google.

  Meredith works in the traditional media products division. Will share stories of advertisers who saw great results using print, TV, and audio through the Google network.

  We know it's important to be found in search. But if you limit focus to just search, you are missing opportunity. Customers are not yet looking for you in many cases.

  Within the Adwords console, you can place ads via these mediums, and can manage them within a single interface.

  Case study: Blue Nile - a diamond retailer. Wanted to target 6 strategic markets. Ran print ads using Google. Used unique URL and unique offer. In markets where they ran print, revenue increased by 29%. They also tried a new ad format - the consumer response tag. When ran ads with this tag, revenue and engagement increased 6.5x.

  Can target by demographic, geography, section of paper, days, time, etc.

  Case study: Golf Now - sells unsold Tee times. Expanded into new areas in the US. Wanted to increase presence in a few markets. Ran print campaigns in relevant sections, as well as audio. Huge spike in sales by accessing print and audio in adwords account allowed efficient targeting within one interface and tracking it.

  1700 different channels across the US, partnered with Clear Channel. Can target by state, market, format, zip code, and demographics. Audio ads offer event triggers - for example weather based products. Can create ads and have them played given the weather condition.

  Case Study - the Hanley Center Drug Rehab Center. Goal was to reach new potential enrollers beyond local market. Ran national TV campaign using Google TV ads. Used day parts, and also targeted specific shows. Measured brochure requests. Saw a 40% increase. After the TV campaigns, identified what specific markets were most receptive, and able to up the ad buys in those markets.

  Can access up to 96 cable networks in the US. Most excited part is collecting anonymous data from set top boxes, and share that data with us. Not only tell us impressions, but can also get data on second by second basis. What percentage of audience watched the ad till the end.

  Google Analytics can also measure TV and Audio. Analytics will be able to measure Print campaigns very soon.

  
  Contributed by Avi Wilensky of Promediacorp.

• 

  Effective Contextual Search Management

  Posted: August 21st, 2008, 9:24pm CEST by rustybrick

  Tags:  Search Engine Strategies 2008 San  

  This session looks at the way publishers can generate revenue by carrying contextual ads offered by major networks and effective tactics for managing paid search in the contextual advertising arena. You'll hear from publishers delivering ads and those who manage contextual campaigns.

  Moderator:

  Gregg Stewart, SVP, Interactive, TMP Directional Marketing
  Speakers:

  David Szetela, CEO, Clix Marketing
  Cynthia Tillo, Senior Product Manager of Advertising Services, Adobe Systems
  Jennifer Slegg, Owner, JenSense.com
  
  Gregg Stewart: First up we have David Szetela, he's SEW's expert in content advertising.

  David: Thanks Gregg. I write a column called profitable PPC that hopes to teach you everything about PPC. The contextual column I write is based on a lot of research and interviews at the bar with a lot of Google and Yahoo people. The available click inventory in the content network is growing at a much faster pace than in search. There is a lot less competition in the content network so if you are faced with rising click costs in search you should definitely switch to content advertising.

  So the subtitle of this presentation is "content network doesn't really suck as much as people think it does". So why do content advertisers lose money?

  1. The ads appear on irrelevant pages and they get bad clicks (low conversions rates). But my theory is that people will click on anything regardless of relevancy. So they get clicks, but no conversions.

  2. The ads don't distract attention from site content – people are not looking for your ad so the ads need to distract attention from the content.

  3. By default when you create a Google Adwords campaign, search and content are blended (shows image of Adwords campaign settings set up screen). Always uncheck the content network box for search campaigns and vice versa.

  Contextual is not like search. People viewing your ad are not looking for what you are selling, kind of like a print ad. So the first job of every ad is to distract attention away from the content to your message.

  Keyword differences: Keywords in content ad groups are treated very differently than in search - keywords are not discrete entities. You should not use more than 30-50 keywords. In most case your keywords for content should be different than for search. Match types are irrelevant (except negative). Individual keyword bids are irrelevant.

  The most important keyword difference: if properly used, the keywords in the content ad group should describe the kinds of pages where you want your ads to appear. Keyword lists should equal the words that appear most frequently on such pages.

  Ad copy differences: ads need to stand out – distract. Feel free to yell, use exclamation points (only 1 per ad of course) – you can afford to be a little bit obnoxious. Also, be a little bit more competitive. When people see a content ad, they are not in the sales process yet, so you need to lead people to the sales funnel and not assume they are in the sales process.

  And of course you should test, test, test.

  Ad position differences: magic positions for search are 1-3, for content 1-4. Below position 5, your impressions will drop off dramatically.

  Quality score differences: CTR is the only determinate of quality score, which suggests an opposite bidding strategy – most people think to start bids low. But you should start high, buy the CTR, get the quality score love juice and then diminish the bids over time.

  Always set up separate content campaigns.

  Google reporting is essential. Regularly run the report and exclude the ads that are performing poorly.

  That's all I have, this is a subset of what I wrote in my columns, you should check out my posts in SEW. I also have a weekly radio show called PPC Rock Stars you should check out. Thank you!

  Gregg: Thank you David. What would you say are best practices?

  David: A big bold message with a clear call to action works well. GIF or flash animation work well to deliver the message more than words. In text ads, go out on a limb and make strong claims about your product or service, make declarative statements and say crazy things.

  Gregg: Thank you David. Next up is Cynthia from Adobe Systems.

  Cynthia: Basically what I wanted to talk about today is an exciting new channel for you to advertise – PDF documents. Is it so far-fetched that someday the government might monetize the highly-trafficked 1040EZ tax form with advertising? Probably not.

  So when Adobe was thinking about the advertising industry and how we can add value to the space, we thought about how to reach a highly targeted audience. There are over 256 million PDFs floating out there. This is a great way to reach an audience.

  A service we launched in beta about 8, 9 months ago is ads for PDF, and we partnered with Yahoo. As you can see from the slide, we display the ads in a separate panel on the right. It's contextual. From the Adobe standpoint, we have developed some technology understanding what PDFs are about. A page can be anywhere from 1 to 1,000 pages (e-books) So our technology is able to analyze this and we can get some great ad relevance.

  These ads are dynamically matched ads, like every time you visit a web site page. That means that all your targeting options can still be applied to the PDF content itself. With this new service, you can maintain these ads from person to person so you can still reach your target audience.

  We are also letting publishers embed placeholders as well into PDFs – integrate ad content but make it look and feel like a magazine.

  A few examples from a publisher and an advertiser perspective:

  - Newsletters. We have one publisher that puts at a monthly PDF newsletter.

  - Digital versions of a magazine or newsletter.

  - E-books. Traditional publishers are figuring out how to get their content online, so they are making e-book versions in PDF because it's more practical than "next", "next" links in html. Also, people are expecting content for free.

  - Digests and compilations.

  A top use we have seen success in is archives. Some publishers are sitting on a hundred years of content that they are trying to move online. You might think, what types of ads would be served out to people reading 100-year old content? Memorabilia, perhaps.

  Thanks.

  Gregg: Any design implications on PDF sites with advertising?

  Cynthia: not design, but we have been seeing high CTR rates – by the time people take the trouble to download a PDF they are highly engaged. And also, there are not a lot of distractions like in traditional websites.

  Gregg: Next up is Jen Slegg.

  Jen: I will walk you through tips and techniques from a publisher perspective.

  You have to think about what you want to monetize, explore your options.

  When you shouldn't monetize contextual advertising:

  - If you are business site selling products, why do you want people to click on ads, you will be sending them to competitors instead.

  - If you are an accountant, you don't want ads of do it yourself tax software, you want the people to be your clients.

  - Any site with content against Adsense policies, like gambling.

  Are you leaving money on the table?

  Some people don't realize that if they put some thought into testing, they can do better. So think – why did you chose the Adsense network, there are tons of other programs. Why did you put the ad where you did, why did you choose the color scheme that you did? Did you consider the user experience? When people get too focused on making money they inconvenience the user.

  What is your priority– for the users or for monetization? It's hard to achieve the balance, in the long term you should be prioritizing the user experience so you get repeat visitors.

  Beyond Adsense:

  - Image ads/graphical ads

  - Video ads

  - Affiliate ads

  - Cost per action

  - Cost per thousand

  - Adsense for search/mobile/feed

  - Other contextual companies

  Don't just focus on Adsense. Consider the options because Adsense might not be the best choice for you. You need to test and try out your different options.

  Some things you should consider:

  - placement

  - proximity – wrapping text around the ad unit – it could perform well

  - size selection

  - ad unit colors and borders, can have a huge effect

  - borders

  - keywords

  - URL filters

  - geo-targeting – consider how the traffic from different countries can affect your bottom line

  Ad units that earn people the most money:

  336 x 280

  300 x 250

  Are you filtering out your revenue? Be aware that your ad blocking filter list will cost you revenue. You really only want to filter out your competitors, ads that are grossly mistargeted or ads that are inappropriate.

  Ad heaviness turns off users: don't have 3 identical image ads in 3 or 4 places on the same page. Don't make user scroll down 3 times to get to your content. And don't make the visitor feel that they are only there to click your ads.

  Don't select ads just because they pay more CPA – carefully select cost per action ads. Must be targeted.

  Some takeaways:

  -always do A/B testing

  -experiment with different placement, sizes, styles, colors, etc.

  -consider the impact of being too ad heavy

  -look beyond traditional Adsense text ads and experiment with other formats

  Thank you.

  Gregg: Thanks Jen, are publishers relying too heavily on one source of revenue?

  Jen: everyone things Adsense is the best choice, but what if the account gets banned, or the traffic drops, it could have a major impact, so always have a backup, especially if 99% of your income comes from one source.

  Audience Q&A.

  Session coverage provided by Sheara Wilensky of Promediacorp.

• 

  How to Speak Geek: Working Collaboratively With Your IT Department to Get Stuff Done

  Posted: August 21st, 2008, 9:14pm CEST by rustybrick

  Tags:  Search Engine Strategies 2008 San  

  Are you in charge of marketing the website, yet have to deal with unfamiliar IT issues? How do you handle a mean IT department? Do you want to improve your relationship with your IT staff? This session provides clear advice and translates the geek-speak into real-life examples. Learn specific steps to analyze your website for potential search engine road blocks such as duplicate content penalties, canonicalization, circular navigation, and other technical horrors. We'll help you identify potential problems and provide clear advice on how to approach your IT department with your request and an olive branch of peace.

  Moderator:
  Jeffrey Rohrs, Vice President, Marketing, ExactTarget

  Speakers:
  Matthew Bailey, President, SiteLogic
  Chris "Silver" Smith, Lead Strategist, Netconcepts
  Greg Boser, Three Dog Media
  Sage Lewis, SageRock.com
  Matt Bailey started. He started in IT, would deal with marketers wanting IT stuff, then went into marketing and had to go to IT to have them do things.

  Robots.txt
  Think of robots.txt as a welcome mat for the search engines. Welcomes the bots, but also says here is crap in our index that we don’t want you to look at.

  Example of very basic robots.txt file.
  User-agent: *
  Disallow: /admin
  Disallow: /test

  Do NOT just say Disallow: / as it will exclude all content.

  Redirects

  • Change or URL
  • Change of index page
  • 301 (permanent)
  • 302 (temporary)

  WebBug is a good software tool that lets you know if there is a redirect for a site. Redirects within a site is OK, but need to examine how they work on your home page (sorry, didn’t get exact explanation of this).

  Inconsistent linking. Gives example of rookstone.com that has inconsistent URLs, multiple URLs for home page.

  Duplicate Content. Shows Brookstone again with multiple URLs for same battery. Think of duplicate content as having 4,000 mailboxes in front of your house. You need to figure out which mailbox is getting the mail. Which mailbox is Google going to think is the right mailbox?

  Crappy URLs. Long URLs are not user friendly, especially ones with a lot of numerical parameters instead of shorter with words in URL.

  Favicon. Get a favicon, gets you more opportunity to brand.
  Short. vs. long. Words in URL also help.

  Diluted Content
  Putting everything on one page, gives example of 200 gadgets on one page, not focusing on good categories.

  Unclear Instructions
  Need to give marketing information to user. Site may be technically fine, but not good for marketing, unclear to users.

  404 pages
  Marketing and IT both need to work on good 404 pages. Marketing needs to give users a friendly message.

  Don’t point fingers, before you blame IT make sure that it’s not a marketing problem. Gives example of marketing complaining about no sales, blaming IT, but marketing had never gone and tried to buy a product from their site.

  
  Chris Silver Smith

  Getting in touch with your geek side

  1. Check for problems: SEO health diagnostics
  2. How are we today? Ongoing analytics
  3. Watching recurring issues
  4. befriend IT colleagues
  5. Get company to Prioritize SEO
  6. Still can’t win?

  Check for problems: SEO health diagnostics
  Get Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox (and a couple of other browsers).
  View your site like a search engine spider would. Web Developer Toolbar lets you disable things like javascript, CSS, images, etc. Shows Coca Cola website without images, etc. sees very little information and especially keywords about Coca Cola.

  User Agent Switcher: signals site that you are googlebot, slurp, etc. See what site looks like to googlebot.

  Example of bad redirection: Coca-Cola. He shows javascript or meta-refreshes being used instead of server-side redirect. Need to use server-side redirect. Check the header, should return 301 if redirected, not a 200.

  How are we today? Ongoing analytics

  • Check daily referred visits for each of the search engines. If you get a huge drop from search engines, especially zero, work with IT and try to figure out what had happened.
  • Track conversions from SEO traffic vs. other sources
  • Track bot requests over time. Need to look at log files, Google analytics doesn’t help because it only looks at java script.

  CMS Hell (recurring issues)
  Recurring CMS/Legacy Issues? Check and re-check SEO factors – titles, metas, H1s, etc. Don’t assume once fixed, always fixed.

  Befriend your IT Colleagues

  • Befriend and collaborate with IT
  • Give credit to IT where/when credit is due
  • Understand that improvements can be handled iteratively, be satisfied with baby steps towards goals – all progress is worthwhile
  • Follow standard IT process for prioritizing/scheduling SEO changes

  Get company to recognize SEO

  • Make business case for why SEO is needed. Look at news about money left on tables, competitors’ successes to help convince the rest of the company why SEO is necessary.
  • Equally important to success are user experience, usability, legal requirements, branding, etc.
  • Take every opportunity to educate others about SEO.
  • Once worth of SEO is recognize, it can be prioritized along with other projects, and IT can take it seriously get needed work scheduled.

  Still can’t win?

  • Go to another IT department.
  • Legacy system/hellish CMS? Build Parallel
  • Use a proxy system – GravityStream.com

  Q&A and comments from panelists.

  Greg Boser requires IT to be a part of things. Marketers don’t have terms to explain to IT what it is that they want done. Take presentation to IT, show what they want done, and why they want it done. If IT is not on board, he won’t even take project.

  Panelists suggest reading some basic books on website programming so you can speak to the IT  department with their language, to some degree. You don’t need to learn the language in-depth, but useful to learn the basics.

  Have lots of employees go home and try to buy something on your own website (with dummy credit card), and take screenshots of any problems. Often users will not tell you about problems, this is a great way to get that information complete with screenshots.

  Coverage provided by Keri.

eHub

• 

  Center’d

  Posted: August 21st, 2008, 9:01pm CEST by Emily Chang

  Tags:  Collaborating and managing Events  

  A new planning site, headed up by a busy mom of two and former teacher, that focuses on a results-driven approach to managing the people and plans in your busy life. It combines local search, online planning tools, and social networking features into one easy website. "And because of this crazy back-to-school time, Center'd has created new features and functionality that allows users to add group calendars and shared task sign-up sheets - perfect for managing classroom volunteers or soccer teams (or even your own family schedule!)." URL: Center’d.

Digg / Design

• 

  Shapeways: 3D Printing for Everyone (Except Little Kids)

  Posted: August 21st, 2008, 6:20pm CEST

  Ever had a really cool idea for something you wanted to build, but you had no way to actually build it? Ever designed a toy or a piece of art that you thought would be a neat thing to have, but your skills at molding plastic or at sculpture just weren't up to the task?

Search Engine Roundtable

• 

  Google Releases Major Update to AdWords API Java Library

  Posted: August 21st, 2008, 5:07pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

  Tags:  Google AdWords  

  Google AdWords API advisor writes at Google Groups that the Java client library (version 2.0.0) has been released at [code.google.com].

  Version 2.0.0 has some major fixes. It removes support from v11 and updates the default version to v12, and there's also a document fix to remove the reference to "clientEmail" from AdWordsUser.

  If you encounter any issues, you can always make updates to the list here.

  Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

• 

  Google Fixes 404 Widget Scripting Errors

  Posted: August 21st, 2008, 4:49pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

  Tags:  Other Google Topics  

  Yesterday, we talked about the Google code to enhance the 404 experience. A number of issues were reported with the code in the Google Groups announcement thread, and Google has fortunately made tweaks to fix the issues.

  Google representative JohnMu says that you should be returning a 404 error when using this widget (though it will now work if the page returns a 200 status too!) That's great, because in the example in yesterday's blog post, it wasn't working because a 404 wasn't being returned. Try the advertize.html page now and let us know what you think.

  Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.