Google AdWords Advertisers can now Analyze their Competition

Available only in beta to a small number of advertisers using the English AdWords interface for now, Google has introduced a new “Analyze Competition” feature located on the “opportunities” tab.

By reviewing the account’s activity over two weeks, AdWords will  list categories that represent products and services you’re advertising, based on search terms which are matched up against your keywords, ad text, and landing page. For each category associated with the account, AdWords advertisers will see a bar graph highlighting individual performance compared to the performance of other advertisers and competitors in the same  category.

“When you hover over the data in the ‘Competitive Range’ column, you’ll be able to see more details such as the exact size of your competitive range, the mean and median performance levels for this range, as well as data on the absolute top and bottom performers,” explains Emily Williams of Google’s Inside AdWords crew.

“It’s important to remember that data in ‘Analyze competition’ is anonymous, and as part of our commitment to protect your privacy, we don’t reveal information about any advertiser’s identity,” says Williams.

Facebook is a social networking that was originally designed for college students, but is now open to anyone 13 years of age or older. Facebook users can create and customize their own profiles with photos, videos, and information about themselves. Friends can browse the profiles of other friends and write messages on their pages.

Each Facebook profile has a “wall,” where friends can post comments. Since the wall is viewable by all the user’s friends, wall postings are basically a public conversation. Therefore, it is usually best not to write personal messages on your friends’ walls. Instead, you can send a person a private message, which will show up in his or her private Inbox, similar to an e-mail message.

Facebook allows each user to set privacy settings, which by default are pretty strict. For example, if you have not added a certain person as a friend, that person will not be able to view your profile. However, you can adjust the privacy settings to allow users within your network (such as your college or the area you live) to view part or all of your profile. You can also create a “limited profile,” which allows you to hide certain parts of your profile from a list of users that you select. If you don’t want certain friends to be able to view your full profile, you can add them to your “limited profile” list.

Another feature of Facebook, which makes it different from MySpace, is the ability to add applications to your profile. Facebook applications are small programs developed specifically for Facebook profiles. Some examples include SuperPoke (which extends Facebook’s “poke” function) and FunWall (which builds on the basic “wall” feature). Other applications are informational, such as news feeds and weather forecasts. There are also hundreds of video game applications that allow users to play small video games, such as Jetman or Tetris within their profiles. Since most game applications save high scores, friends can compete against each other or against millions of other Facebook users.

Facebook provides an easy way for friends to keep in touch and for individuals to have a presence on the Web without needing to build a website. Since Facebook makes it easy to upload pictures and videos, nearly anyone can publish a multimedia profile. Of course, if you are a Facebook member or decide to sign up one day, remember to use discretion in what you publish or what you post on other user’s pages. After all, your information is only as public as you choose to make it!

Lots of folks talk about search and never delve into the content network. In the search network you choose keywords based on which ads will be shown in search results. In contrast with the content network, you choose locations, ie, web-sites and individual pages within those sites, where you would like to see your ad.

The content network is the set of sites, blogs and other web products that networks like Google and Yahoo push to publishers that have agreed to publish ads in exchange for a fee per click through an advertising program.

The owner of the website which publishes the ads chooses one or more locations where they will appear, and receives a commission for each click received. The first thing to understand is that, unlike search engine searches and resulting ads, advertisements in the content network are not geared for keywords, but by the content of websites that they occur.

David Szetela’s new book Customers Now: Profiting From the New Frontier of Content Based Internet Advertising shows exactly how to use the networks, set up ads and optimize the platforms for better ROI. Googles content network and  ContextWeb’s ADSDAQ Exchange is also reviewed but does not have the reach of Yahoo or Googles network.

2009 has been rich in articles about SEO and mobile, although the amount was reduced in the second half of the year, the number of investigations this is steadily increasing.
SitePoint has recently submitted an article on Swift – a platform that lets anyone create a mobile site.

The process has been defined as “Mobile SEO”, and there are many SEO companies that are beginning to reap money for “the creation of mobile sites” and doing “SEO phone.

For those who want to start with these practices there are some things you should know that could probably save you a lot of hassle and money in the future.

First, they should know that there is no need to buy a domain. Dot Mobi sites to rate the website for mobile platforms are dead in my opinion. Simple. com’s work well for mobile phones, like all other domain extensions.

It is true that the size of the image has a role to play in making a site “mobile friendly”, but the reduction of the images or the total elimination is not obligatory. The iPhone loads the images in the same way that a computer, and so do some other smart phones like the BlackBerry Storm. Of course, not all Internet users browse with smartphones, but it’s only a matter of time given the growth of mobile technology worldwide.

From a marketing perspective is better to use the same URL for traditional sites and mobile: users will not have to remember two URLs.
The best practices of SEO are also valid for the mobile SEO.
Instead of planning to develop a special mobile site, it would be better if you just stick to some basic design principles: make your site all supported browsers, make sure the site is readable on any screen resolution, making it accessible to all and to ensure that the site loads quickly.

As for SEO, traditional media is still gold: the titles of articles, a good page description, good content on the page, correct labeling, and of course the quality of the links.

2009 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report

SMO, or Social Media Optimization, helps build website traffic by using social media based websites. The dawning of web 2.0 has seen many different social media websites crop up in an equally large number of different guises. Content sharing, social bookmarking, and collaborative websites form the basis of this initiative and it is these types of website that you need to use in order to leverage the power of the social web.

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1. COST
The cost of acquiring a premium domain names is cheaper than continuously paying for local or regional print advertising.

2. THE INTERNET IS KING
Customers now look to the internet first where they can find you 24/7. When was the last time you flipped through the Yellow Pages?

3. GEOGRAPHY
You can immediately reach a broader market with the Internet because your site is always available to all potential customers no matter what time it is where they are.

4. CUSTOMER CONTACT
You can more easily stay in touch with your prospects and customers by gathering their email address and interests directly from your website.

5. MEASUREABLE AND FLEXIBLE MARKETING OPTIONS
Online advertising is easy to track and adjust based on your budget. Dial up or dial down your marketing efforts depending on how well they are generating traffic.

I recently started using twitter and realized that setting up accounts with keywords was a brilliant way to lock out my competition in certain verticals. The next part of the equation was how to monetize the twitter account.

* Direct Advertisement – If a lot of people are following you in ‘twitter’ or in other words if you have a ‘wide reach’ to a large number of twitter users, you can look into direct advertisements for monetization.

* Recommendation – You can recommend a particular product or service on behalf of your advertisers & peruse your followers to take an ‘action’.

* Promotion – You can help your advertiser to promote a new product or service to your twitter followers. I have found a huge increase in my Google analytics where twitter is the referring site.

Twitter works like niche marketing, if you are an Internet Marketer, most of your followers in Twitter are probably from the same sphere of influence which is why they have ‘followed’ you in the first place.

# Affiliate Marketing – I was listening to Shoemoney’s podcast from webmasterradio.fm where he talked about how affiliate marketing can actually be blended within Twitter.

* Affiliate Links – If you are recommending a product or a service to your followers, you can always embed your affiliate link in your tweet. (e.g. Using a service like TinyUrl.com)

* Sales Pages – Instead of taking your followers to another website using your affiliate link, you might just want to promote your own product & services and sell them directly via your sales / landing page.

# Paid Review– This is pretty much like the direct advertisement, however the only difference would be, instead of blindly suggesting a product or a service to someone, you can actually do some ‘paid reviews’. Similar to Blogvertise and other paid inclusion sites.

* Product – Paid review about a particular product (e.g. Internet Marketing software)
* Services – Paid review on services that your advertiser offers. (E.g. Mortgage, Auto, pick any affiliate niche)
* People – Paid review about people. You can review someone’s web design skills, or you may promote someone’s ‘twitter’ account for instance.

# Sponsored Contest– An advertiser may want to run a contest via a popular twitter user to get feedback about his product & services or just to create some brand awareness. (gearing up to the buzz marketing campaign)

* Feedback – Example – “What New features would you like to see in Product A”?
* Brand Awareness– Example- “Describe product X in 140 Characters” or “Tell us why you like product X within 140 Characters”. The best answer can be given a cool prize sponsored by the advertiser.

On-Page Optimization –

· Content Optimization

· Keyword Placement (Frequency, Density, Proximity, etc.)

· Title Tag Optimization

· Meta Tag Optimization

· Spider/Robot Tag Optimization

· Image Alt Optimization

· Internal Link Structure

· 301 Redirects

· Robot.txt Creation

· Broken Links & Page Optimization

· Site Mapping

· Avoiding Specific Design Optimization Issues (Graphic, Flash, Dynamic, Frameset, and Javascript only Sites)

Off-Page Optimization –

· Link Building (One Way and Reciprocal Links)

· Link Baiting (Luring others to want to link to your website)

· Article Submissions

· Press Release Submission

· Directory Submissions

· Search Engine Submission

· Sitemap Submissions

 Social Marketing items such as:

· Social bookmarking

· Optimizing Web 2.0 properties such as Digg, Youtube, Hubpages, Zimbio, Facebook, Myspace, etc.

· Blogging

· Content Building

· Article & Press Release Submissions