Yahoo Search Marketing Panama Upgrades

Yahoo is extending the reach of its Panama Pay Per Click System throughout Europe over the coming months. Up until now, it had only been launched in the US.

The promise to improve geographic targeting will bring much relief to those who use Yahoo's current system.

Panama also promises quicker approval time, allowing ads to be shown quicker. Previously, this took between 1 and 3 days, compared say to Google AdWords where you can have ads showing within 15 minutes of signing up for your account. Panama will now be in par with Google on this front.

Panama will use the feature of ad testing (much like Google's existing feature), whereby ads will be rotated evenly, and tested simultaneously for best performance. Those performing better will be shown more often.

A Visible Quality Index will be implemented (again much like Google's Quality Score) to ensure that advertisers who optimise their accounts and provide users with a quality experience (Google's term), will achieve a higher Quality Index. This will ensure that they achieve a higher ad position at a lower cost in comparison to their competitors.

The new system has been developed so that it can evolve with market trends easily. Hopefully, when Panama has been released worldwide, it will offer the ability to target multiple countries from one log in account. As it stands now, users must create separate accounts for the countries they wish to target. Not only is this frustrating, but also extremely time-consuming and costly as each account must be managed individually.

Find more information on the Yahoo! Europe Panama Upgrade here.

SEO or PPC or BOTH?

Many people assume that if they are appearing in the organic results (through Search Engine Optimisation - SEO) in search engines such as Google, Yahoo or MSN that there is no need to use the respective Pay Per Click (PPC) systems such as Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing or Microsoft adCenter.

This assumption is wrong.

Recent results carried out by Google show 3 major statistics:

• AdWords: 1000 impressions will recieve on average 10 clicks in top position
• Organic: 1000 impressions will recieve on average 20 clicks in top position
• BOTH: 1000 impressions will recieve on average 60 clicks in top position

These results show that you can double your traffic by being at the top of results in both PPC and organic listings.

What must also be taken into consideration is the syndication that takes place when PPC is deployed. When opted into the search network in Google AdWords for example, your ad will be syndicated across seven other search engines including Lycos, Netscape, Alexa, Ask, Hotbot, AOL and Go. Yahoo Search Marketing have a similar system spanning Altavista, Alltheweb, Yahoo and Dogpile.

Therefore, taking this into consideration, it is important to be at the top in both the organic results (through SEO) and the sponsored results (through PPC Management) to get the most traffic to your website.

What is more important is to have a fully optimised PPC account to get the best Return On Investment (ROI). Google has the most advanced PPC system and the widest reach on the internet, therefore Optimisation is a must. Unless you are making use of all the features available to you in your PPC account, you will lose money as you will be paying top price for the top position. With a fully optimised PPC account, you can increase your quality score, resulting in a higher position with a lower Cost Per Click (CPC). Our PPC techniques page shows all of the functions in Google AdWords that you should be using to get the best ROI. If you are not using these functions, then contact us for a quote on PPC Management to maximise you Return On Investment.

Pay Per Click Management

Due to popular demand, Compelite have expanded their expertise in Pay Per Click (PPC) management, and now offer Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter management.

Although Google offer the most advanced PPC system on the market, we have decided to expand our services to include Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter so that we can offer our clients a wider range of services.

Yahoo Search Marketing have recently upgraded their PPC system in the US to their new Panama ad system in order to better compete with Google AdWords. Although Yahoo started the PPC systems that we see today (formerly called GoTo, then Overture, then Yahoo Search Marketing), we now see them continuously playing catch up with Google. Their lastest addition has been their ad ranking system which closely resembles Google's Quality Score system.

Microsoft have also recently updated their ppc system from MSN adCenter to Microsoft adCenter, as well as updated several aspects of their tools available.

Alexa Traffic Rankings

www.Alexa.com is a popular traffic ranking website among the Search Engine Marketing industry as well as among those who are concerned about their online ranking.

As stated on the Alexa website: "Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa Toolbar users."

Many users however get confused as to what this traffic ranking actually means. What Alexa is doing is comparing your site's traffic (the number of visitors to your site) with that of all the other websites in the world.

Also we must take note that the traffic that it measures is only traffic from those who have the Alexa toolbar installed. Because of this there will be a bias towards more technical sites getting ranked higher, as more technical users use this toolbar. Alexa states:

"The traffic data are based on the set of toolbars that use Alexa data, which may not be a representative sample of the global Internet population."

Alexa, therefore is not a very reliable tool when comparing your website to the world. Perhaps a better analysis would be to compare your website to those of your direct competitors in your own field. Take for example:

• Compelite Limited - Alexa Ranking of 227,693
• Jump Web Services Limited - Alexa Ranking of 412,963
• Agog Digital Marketing Strategy - Alexa Ranking of 860,550
• Flying Tiger Web Design - Alexa Ranking of 2,254,795
• Fluid Design and Marketing - Alexa Ranking of 3,302,708
• Rebound Internet Services Limited - Alexa Ranking of 4,018,912

This way you can see a much better analysis of your Traffic Ranking in comparison to your competitors. If you notice that your ranking has dropped significantly, check the ranking of your competitors to see if the trend is the same.

One must also take note that Alexa states:

"Generally, Traffic Rankings of 100,000+ should be regarded as not reliable because the amount of data we receive is not statistically significant"

Therefore you should really only look to Alexa as a reliable tool when your Alexa Ranking is well withing the 100,000 mark.

A more important measure of Website Ranking is where your website appears when someone searches for it in either Google, Yahoo or MSN. If you type "web design hong kong" into Google, we would expect to see Compelite on the first page.

This means that your website is highly visible, and there is a good chance that users will click on it if it appears on the first page of search engine results. Check out Compelite's Search Engine Marketing (SEM) services and get your website listed where the clients are clicking!

Choosing the Right SEO Company

Yesterday, a popular Search Engine Optimisation company in Australia was penalised in Google for spamming their index by using Black-Hat SEO techniques to artificially boost their rankings. The major technique they used was a link-building technique that linked their websites to other irrelevant websites. When doing a search for the sites that link to them in Google (please copy and paste the link into your browser to see the example - we have purposely avoided linking to these sites so that Google will not relate our sites with those listed):

• http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=GGLJ%2CGGLJ%3A2006-47%2CGGLJ%3Aen&q=link%3Awww.foundagency.com.au&btnG=Search

...It can be seen that there are many irrelevant sites. Take one for example, HIT RADIO. On this site you can find their links page:

• http://pub44.bravenet.com/freelink/show.php?usernum=3743912404&cpv=1

...which links to a load of irrelevant sites. These sites and their link pages are often referred to as Link Farms and are something that you want to avoid at all costs.

It is extremely important to choose the right Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) company and more importantly one that uses 'white-hat' SEO techniques.

White-Hat SEO techniques are those techniques encouraged by Google. These are ways to optimise your website without spamming search engines. See our list of White-Hat SEO techniques used at Compelite.

Black-Hat SEO techniques are used to artificially boost ranking by using spamming techniques.

The company mentioned above risks their website being banned in search engines and also all of their client sites risk being banned as they, no doubt, will be inadvertently using the same techniques to increase their rankings. This is why it is extremely important to find an SEO company that is open and honest with you about the techniques that they use.

You will find all the techniques or factors that Compelite look into when performing an SEO campaign on our Search Engine Optimisation Techniques page. We also list all the techniques used when managing your Pay Per Click campaign on our Google AdWords Techniques page. When choosing a company to Manage your AdWords Account you should also make sure that they are qualified as a Google Advertising Professional. This will ensure that they can offer you the best management and Return on Investment (ROI).

Any SEO company that is extremely secretive of the SEO techniques that they use, should be avoided or at least investigated more meticulously. Those that are open and thorough in their explanations can be trusted and researched to a point of understanding that can be trusted.

Google has a recommendations page when selecting the right SEO Company to work with. You can find that page under their "My sites ranking in Google" section.

Search Engine Optimisation vs. Pay Per Click

Over the years we have seen varying trends between the popularity of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and the Pay Per Click (PPC) model. But where are we today?

SEO has been steadily gaining trust once again, compared to when it was highly abused in the past, due mainly to poor Search Engine Algorithms. Search Engine Algorithms have since improved tremendously and we are now seeing results that were the sole purpose of the invention of Search Engines. After all we must remember that Search was never intended to generate traffic for commercial websites. For example, “Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Note that this says nothing to the tune of providing the best free advertising medium.

We have seen a consistent trend recently of an increase in Blogs and generally useful information (take for example, wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit). Commercial websites appear to be dropping lower and lower in the search engine rankings. This tells us what the future may hold. I suspect that we will see a total shift where commercial websites will no longer be a candidate for SEO. Rather PPC will be the advertising medium of choice, providing the most valuable positions in search engine rankings for commercial websites.

This begs the question, where does that leave the small contenders who cannot afford either an SEO campaign (which most likely will not be applicable compared to the competition) or a PPC Advertising Campaign? Well this is a question that will need to be answered by the top search engines, as we move in this direction day by day. Perhaps these less fortunate companies are better off by relying less on search engine results and more on their own marketing campaigns such as eNewsletters that are sent directly to their own registered users. WhosOn could be another option in monitoring the performance of marketing campaigns and the like. WhosOn is a tool which will show you who is using your web sites in real time, as well as give you and your visitors the ability to chat to each other. This tool will also give you all of the statistics that are available to you through Google AdWords' own monitoring program, Google Analytics. Try Whoson now with a Free 1 Month Trial!

Meanwhile Google AdWords is paving the path as the most sophisticated PPC model on the market. Google is one of the only companies that has invested nearly nothing in promoting its ad program, rather spending their time and money on technological innovation. This is one major reason why they are way ahead of the rest in the same arena, and why advertisers put so much more trust into Google AdWords – Because they have a model that promotes itself through word of mouth and results that you can trust. Google also continues to make constant minor changes to its PPC model to provide consistent advances in technology, as well as the best possible services available for its users.

With the consistent decline in the click through rate (CTR) of banner advertisements and the like, it is not difficult to see why PPC ads are so popular. Banner ad CTR’s often fall below 0.1%, and are continuing to do so. Compare this to PPC CTR’s, which can often be up to 100 times better when optimised efficiently by a Google Advertising Professional.

What I find upsetting in this area of Google’s Advanced PPC model is that advertisers believe that they are fully capable in managing their own PPC accounts. While this may be the case in some circumstances, most advertisers simply do not have the time or the expertise to fully manage a Google AdWords account in order to capitalise on performance and results.

Almost everything can be measured in a Google AdWords account, providing the advertiser with a wealth of information, compared with lesser advertising techniques where you must simply be content with lots of traffic that may or may not convert into sales. With Google AdWords you can measure conversion rates and do something about them if they are below your expectations.

With a Google Advertising Professional at the reins, they can check every item that is available to them through the AdWords platform to provide the best CTR’s, and ultimately the best Return On Investment (ROI). Successful deployment of an AdWords account involves making use of all of its features, repetitively, as new advertisers enter the market and old ones leave. The PPC market is ever changing, and so too must your account to keep up both with the changes in the number of advertisers and in the trends by prospects searching for your products and/or services throughout different times of the year. Also you will excel over your competitors who are managing their own campaigns, not knowing/using all of the features available in their Google AdWords account.

Search Engine Marketing - Return on Investment

Search Engine Marketing:
The Ultimate Return on Investment:

There was a considerable turnout at today’s event hosted by The American Chamber of Commerce at the JW Marriot in Hong Kong. Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing was the main topic with Search Engine Optimisation only touched upon briefly.

The primary speakers today were:

Celia Chan, MSN Asia Regional Director, Microsoft Corporation.
Anna Chan, Corporate Sales Manager, Search Marketing, Yahoo! Hong Kong Limited
Crid Yu, Head of Sales, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, Google Inc.

I was quite disappointed to find that the event was primarily concerned about Google, Yahoo and MSN pushing their PPC programs, and of course how their systems can bring you valuable traffic and Return on Investment.

Although I agree to some extent that their PPC services are valuable, I also believe that a PPC campaign can only be successfully executed when run alongside a strong Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign.

Let me briefly explain the two systems. In Search Engine Optimisation, our primary goal is to get common keywords that potential customers will use to find your product or services on a search engine, ranked as high as possible – organically. By organic, I mean without paying a search engine to boost your ranking. To do this, we will optimise your website (as well as many other factors), so that it is more appealing to a search engine, and therefore it will rank higher because of its worth to the community as a whole.

Pay Per Click, however, involves paying a search engine to list your website at a certain level, depending on the amount of money you spend on any particular keyword.

What also surprised me was that PPC was primarily focused toward the ‘average user’. Most people/companies are expected to run their own campaigns, bidding on their own selected keywords without much or any guidelines on what price to bid or what keywords to bid on. Specializing in Search Engine Optimisation, primarily in Hong Kong, Compelite know for a fact that it is very important to select the correct keywords in any search engine campaign, be it either organic, or PPC. Considering this, I think it is very likely that many businesses are wasting their money, by running their own PPC campaigns, without having the proper knowledge of which keywords to focus on.

So, in conclusion, I would recommend that the focus be placed on Search Engine Optimisation, with PPC used as an additional support (if necessary). We have found that the majority of users select an organic result first. They will only look to a sponsored result (PPC), only when they cannot find what they are looking for in the organic results. Therefore PPC is really only a backup. As search engines are becoming more and more advanced by filtering out the SPAM, and placing the most relevant search results at the top, there is less need for PPC marketing campaigns.

Michael Pieper
SEO Manager.
Compelite Limited.