Articles in General SEM

Consider yourself lucky to be a search engine marketer. When you  log in to AdWords each morning, you are presented with an array of tools, reports, and options. You can mass-edit bids, run historical analyses, A/B test ad text, and even adjust your bids by time of day (to 15-minute intervals) or geography (to a zip code). And for the tech-savvy amongst you, you don’t even have to log in to get all of this...

When you stop to consider that search marketing has only been around about 10 years (counting the launch of GoTo.com as the birth date), the industry certainly has evolved quickly. Instead of only one search engine, we now have at least four legitimate choices (YSM, Google, MSN, Ask), and that’s not including important niche players like Quigo, IndustryBrains, or Business.com. Instead of one pricing model (cost per click), we also have cost per thousand (CPM)...

As someone who has been in the search business for more years than I’d ever like to disclose, I can say unequivocally that it’s more exciting than ever to be in this market segment. More than any other time since the turn of the century, 2007 looks to be the year of a revolution in search, or at least a major step in evolution.  Not since the days of Google actually having to battle for...

Search engine marketing (also known as SEM) – done correctly – can be a huge money-making opportunity for your business. Like anything, however, there are also many opportunities to lose your shirt. Sadly, as the search engine marketing industry “grows up”, the number of scams invented to rip off potential buyers will only increase. The good news is that you should be able to recognize most search engine marketing scams within the first 30 seconds...

On the web – no matter what your business – if you have a website, you have been faced with choices related to how you market and promote your site.  Once upon a time the choices were pretty simple.  To spam or not to spam.  Email was the weapon of choice, because it was the only choice. Some people went the spam route with great success, some failed, and others ended up in court. Years...

As a busy professional in the hectic Search Engine Marketing industry, my time is limited. Severely limited. Sometimes I feel like I need to travel at warp speed just to keep up with the demands of this industry! To squeeze as much into my schedule as possible without resorting to self-cloning, my daily routine involves the use of a range of time-saving tools and software. Here are a few of my favorites: FreshBooks Invoicing and...

Yearly predictions for search engine marketing usually focus on technology and industry trends. This year, to quote a famous phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Lower Cost Per Click— Many analysts predict that SEM will be unaffected by the economy in 2009, since marketers will slash other advertising before touching their search marketing budgets. Perhaps, but for many small businesses, search engine marketing is their only advertising. In sectors dominated by small business, we could see...

Google’s often-cited philosophy is to not do evil while carrying out its mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” With such lofty ethics, it came as a surprise when the search engine that so many of us trusted to neutrally parcel the Internet launched Google.cn on Chinese soil in 2006. As part of the arrangement to break ground in the Communist nation, Google had to agree to a substantially...

Website security is not just about credit card numbers. Hackers can exploit the same security vulnerabilities to inject adware and malware into your website. Google’s creation of PageRank, and the resultant creation of link equity, has created a black market for unethical search marketers who inject spam links using similar methods. In fact, this exact thing happened to Al Gore’s blog in 2007 where suddenly Al Gore shifted gears from global warming to Viagra and...