Read at his Facebook wall to find out the reply.

What Makes the Best Search Team

Teamwork.

It will help if you have a star or two in your team. But most importantly, it is the company culture and teamwork that matter. Search marketing and SEO can no longer be performed by a lone person. It requires both creative talents and analytical thinking. Also the process can be painfully tedious.

Technical Skills.

You will need to hire people who are not only the best in the technical expertise but able to work as a team to offer the most effective solution to the clients.

Experience.

An experienced team in both marketing and IT will increase your effectiveness and offer you the best result. The search marketing is a very young industry and whichever team with the most experience will also be the most valuable to the clients. Because we know a mistake can be very costly.

I guess the boss of Big Advertising must have a team with the above qualities in order to make such a claim… arguably the best search team in the region.

The first expenses you should examine are the campaign costs. You should have separate campaigns targeting your Google search ads and your content network ads. If you have this, you will be able to manage budgeting and adjust ad and keyword bids for each of your networks separately. In addition, for your content campaigns, using category and site exclusions to preserve your click dollars is highly recommended. This will prevent your ads from showing up on unrelated websites.

The next thing to do is to determine your most successful keywords and then redo bids if necessary. Additionally, for your existing keywords you can also add distinctive query match types, particularly for keywords that are expensive or have high CPAs (costs per action). This will let you set individual bids for each different match type.

You should also look at your keywords’ Quality Scores. Any keywords you find with four or less for the Quality Scores and have zero conversions should be put on hold. The Quality Score will affect the keyword’s CPC (cost per click) and bid estimate for the first page. It will also have an effect on the ranking of your ad and whether or not the keyword is eligible for entrance into the ad auction.

However, you may find that you’re working with thousands of keywords. This could even be hundreds of thousands of different terms. In this case, you will require at least partial automation to assist you in managing and controlling the expenses of the many long-tail keywords you may have. Below are numerous bid management tools to help you succeed in doing this.

Acquisio Search

The Acquisio SEARCH platform includes a effective campaign and bid control module based on rules. Among many other functions, the tool reveals to you which keywords will need to be paused. It also sends you an email when your keyword terms have insufficient Quality Scores. In addition, it lets you determine the best CPCs.

Clickable

Clickable ActEngine examines your PPC campaign and will automatically come up with recommendations for the best performance, specifically, it will propose raising your bids on the most successful keyword terms, and decreasing bids of your worst performing keywords. It can also alert you of keywords that gone below the original first page estimations.

Podium adCore

This is an algorithm for bid management that can alter bids at both the ad groud and keyword levels. It can also assist in testing various ad creatives. It also has a keyword cleanup option for eliminating poor keywords.

DoubleClick DART Search

This automated tool for bid management, which is part of DART Search, is able to bid on the keywords you want as many as 12 times daily. This lets you come up with a strategy for bidding by picking two rules you would like to apply in a specific order. The bid rules for this includes ROI and those based on position.

Omniture SearchCenter

The Search Center is a portion of the Online Omniture Marketing Suite for applications. This bid engine is automated and the presents different tactics for bid management. This includes both portfolio and rules-based tactics.

Even if you are using automated tools, you should still practice regularly scheduled manual management of your campaign expenses. The above described methods should assist you in keeping all your PPC costs in line.

About the author:
Michael Ramirez is a freelance web consultant living in Montreal. He can be reached at mikejoeramirez@gmail.com

The reply came a couple days later and I was convinced that this is a genuine invitation from Yahoo Southeast Asia. The reason why I got an invitation was this blog is about search marketing and is targeting readers in countries from the region in particularly Singapore and Malaysia.

I have been using Yahoo Search Marketing for several years now, not the Southeast Asia version but the USA version. Generally, my campaigns at Yahoo Search Marketing give better ROI than Google AdWords. The clicks are lesser with Yahoo’s campaign but I do made more money in terms of ROI.

Why You Want to Buy Yahoo Search PPC

Many online business are missing out the additional opportunity to promote their services and products if they are not using Yahoo Search Marketing Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising in Southeast Asia.

Here’s why.

From my unofficial survey, 5 out of every 10 people in Singapore use Yahoo mail. The percentage of people using Yahoo search in Singapore is also higher here when compared with USA market.

It is less competitive, bid price wise, since there are lesser advertisers. From my experience, the quality of the visitors, in term of commercial intent, is better hence giving me a better ROI.

So what are you waiting for?

Go click at the Yahoo Search banner below, register now and get your $30 credit.

Here’s some blog posts on Search Trend Optimization:

• www.blogopreneur.com/2007/03/13/search-trend-optimization
• www.andyhun.com/2007/08/search-trend-optimization-is-this-going.html
• www.achever.com/ecomm-meeting-1-sep-2007-search-trend-optimization.html

Recently, I optimized a relatively new blog (created on 17 Feb 2008) – http://wassup.myblog.sg, to test out the search trend optimization technique.

Case Study 1: Natas Travel Fair 2008

I first made a post related to Natas Fair on 23 Feb 2008. Then 3 days later, I made a very short post on the Natas Travel Fair 2008. Over the past 10 days, the new blog wassup.myblog.sg attracted nearly 400 visitors looking for information related to “natas”. All these visitors came through the search engine listing because of 2 short blog posts!

Traffic Sources Keywords Report by Google Analytics

If you have a travel related blog, go made a post on the next Natas later this year and see the increase in visitors to your Web site.

Case Study 2: Singapore IT Show 2008

The Singapore IT Show 2008 will start this Thursday, 6 March 2008. My blog post on the IT Show event was made yesterday, and it is now ranked among the top 10 for several “IT Show” related search terms.

Google SERP: IT Show 2008

Google SERP: IT Show 2008 Singapore

With good rankings for such targeted search terms, I am expecting a signification increase in the number of visitors to the blog over the next few days.

If you plan to visit the IT Show this week, I suggest that you blog it and see the result for yourself.

Please leave your comment below if you mentioned about the event in your blog.

So what happened?

Did anyone hear anything about the “re-branding” of googlereseller.com.sg to clicktrue.com.sg?

Apparently, the people at HWZ who came up with the new site did not say why the name change. The announcement was simply…

“With this re-branding, it hopes to strengthen itself as a leading service provider of Pay Per Performance online advertising.”

Google Trademark Infringement

Do you think a subsidiary of a public listed company in Singapore just go spend ten of thousand of dollars to “re-brand” with no good reason. Afterall, googlereseller.com.sg is a keyword rich domain name and the domain name alone is worth thousands in the domain name aftermarket.

Here’s the old screenshot of www.googlereseller.com.sg:

I guess it was more likely that SPH got a lawyer letter from Google for trademark infringement. Indeed, it was a sneaky, rotten deed for a company to blatantly use another company name in the domain name and profit from it.

Google has a team of lawyers going around sending nasty letters to owners whose domains consist of word/words related to Google, Adwords, Adsense and so on.

Why It Was Not A Genuine Re-Branding Exercise?

HWZ has been using googlereseller.com.sg since May 2006 and building its brand even before SPH paid S$7.1 million to acquire Hardware Zone.

Being a search marketing company, I am sure they realize the important of protecting their website search engine visibility. Unfortunately, just 2 pages were left in Google search index.

GoogleReseller.com.sg cached page showing the pricing of Adwords campaign packages.

Also, there are existing links from other websites still pointing to www.googlereseller.com.sg. A proper re-branding exercise will need at least 6 months to switch over to the new URL and allow time for the permanent re-direction of www.google.com.sg to the new www.clicktrue.com.sg to take effect.

Google took over the domain and killed website. All the time and effort invested by HWZ team over the past years is now wasted and a loss to SPH.

So what’s your take on this fiasco?

Write your thoughts in the comment box below.

The 2 days SEO Workshop covers beyond basic SEO guidelines and good practice. It is no longer good enough to be ranked top in search engines e.g. Google and Yahoo. The objectives of the SEO Workshop organized by Finggle includes driving targeted traffic and converting visitors to customers.

Watch the following videos and hear what the marketing professional and management consultant said about the SEO Workshop.

Mark Vozzo, Search Marketing Analyst, Fairfax -
the largest newspaper publisher in Australia

Kala Nehete learnt SEO to promote e-commerce site
and Spa facility to be set up in Bangalore, India

Small & Medium sized Companies are Turning to Search Marketing

Many Internet savvy business owners are turning to online marketing to generate leads. Search marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote products and services.

As far as marketing is concerned, I believe SEO skills should be core competence for marketing professionals. Web designers should not be allowed to come up with a dysfunctional or broken Web site.

Companies are Suffering from Dysfunctional Web Site

As we can see time and again, established companies(public-listed) and government agencies have Web sites that are not SEO-friendly and are not concerned with search engine marketing. Many of these sites have been around for a long time, even before Google was founded in 1998, and are regarded as authority sites. Their listings are guaranteed in the major search engines.

However, small and medium sized companies with newer Web sites have to struggle and complied with the rules set up by the search engines. Otherwise, they will not be included in the search engines’ database and can never be found by their potential customers in the cyberspace.

Three Possible Solutions to Effective Search Marketing

For companies which have crippled Web sites, you can either pay thousands of dollars to hire SEO consultants to fix your site or buy Sponsored Links from Google and Yahoo.

There is one more option, learn SEO and Search Marketing.

To summarise, the 3 possible solutions are:

1. Hire SEO Consultants to fix Web site

2. Pay Google and Yahoo for Sponsored Links

3. Learn SEO and Search Marketing

Go find out more about the SEO Training Courses at Finggle.

In order to measure the performance of a SEO project, you’ll need the appropriate metrics. Beside basic metrics related to your SEM e.g. PPC campaign and sponsored links advertisement, such as CPC, CPM, CTR and etc., SEO specialists must also measure hits, pageviews, unique visitors, bounce rate and more.

A couple of months ago, I decided to invest in the book “Marketing Metrics: 50+ Metrics Every Executive Should Master”

Yes it is a text book for marketing degree and MBA. That’s why it took me 2 months to “browse” through the book.

The book has an entire chapter on Web Metrics.

This is the chapter that all SEO/SEM specialists must read. In fact, anyone who wants to marketing online must read this chapter. It has the most important metrics that determine the success of a site.

I particularly like the explanation on the application of each metric. Now, I know exactly which metrics to use to measure the various aspect of a site, be it an information or e-commerce site.

Very likely, the book is available at your local library and I strongly recommend you to go get it now.

As most people in Singapore know, ST701 was originally the online version of CATS job listing. Now, it has more than just job listing – it’s like a classified ads.

Here’s a screenshot of the ST701 web site back in April 2006.

ST701 Navigation Sucks

And you know what? I think the new web site user-interface sucks big time!

The roll-over square navigation box on the right hand side of the page is a stupid idea. For a normal person which moves the mouse from left to right or right to left, it would be impossible for you select the Car Classified! Here, you must move your mouse from the top-down to select the Cars section.

My Question to ST701 is this:

“Why would you want to make it difficult for your visitors to navigate to Cars Classified?”

Go try it yourself and be the judge.

I will spend a couple of hours to do a more detailed research on the website and make a quick SEO analysis report.

Maintaining a high PageRank

In fact, the Pagerank suffered a big drop from 4 to 3 then 2 since early this year. As you can see, I was very active in writing the fresh content in the first few months but since early this year I have been lazy and just copy and paste articles to post on this blog. The SE spiders and bots can tell if your content is unique or copied so if you want good PR and ranking – writing your own content.

Beside adding new unique content here, I am implementing a Partners Directory in this site.

Backlinks to Boost Your PageRank

Hopefully, I will get some backlinks and reciprocal links to boost my PR. There are hundreds of SEO, Internet Marketing, Web Hosting and Website Resources links in the Web directory.

These links are chosen as they are related to the topics of SEO and Search Marketing so that the spiderbots can establish relevance. Some of these sites are ranked PR5 and above, so do check it out.