Bing Adcenter PPC Optimization, Yahoo PPC to Adcenter Tips

Microsoft Bing Adcenter updated the Bing-Yahoo Search alliance by announcing all US/Canada-based search ads have been moved to run in Bing’s Adcenter search ad auction system from Yahoo Search Marketing.

The transition of Yahoo Search ad serving to Microsoft Advertising adCenter is now complete. Thanks for everything you’ve done to prepare for this transition. Your Microsoft Advertising adCenter ads can now reach 163 million unique searchers using Microsoft and Yahoo sites (including Yahoo Search, Bing, and partners), providing a sizable volume of 5.7 billion monthly searches.

Your ads are now reaching potential customers on Yahoo Search and Bing. As more and more Yahoo advertisers join the auction, it’s important to actively monitor your campaign performance. Take an active role in monitoring and modifying your campaigns to achieve optimal performance results on Yahoo Search and Bing.

Tips for Bing-Yahoo PPC’s Transition and Adcenter Optimization

Some PPC experts offer optimization tips for the transition from Yahoo Search Marketing to Bing Adcenter.

Goodbye, Yahoo: 4 Things I’ll Miss About Panama: Search Engine Watch explains you could use 4 features to optimize on Yahoo PPC, but not on Bing Adcenter PPC:

  • Partner domain transparency and exclusion
  • Alt text in ad text
  • The ability to upload changes via Yahoo Search Marketing’s user interface
  • The 71 character limit for ads

3 adCenter Optimization Tips: Search Engine Watch describes how you could use 3 features to optimize on Adcenter PPC, but not on Yahoo PPC:

  • Your Yahoo keyword list will have gaps when ported to Adcenter. Use Bing keyword tools to improve your lists.
  • Take advantage of Adcenter’s {Param} function. For example, use Adcenter dynamic keyword insertion.
  • Take advantage of the new domain exclusion feature.

Yahoo To Microsoft Transition Survival Guide: PPC Hero compares the different features in Yahoo Search Marketing and Bing Adcenter:

  • Ad distribution settings – AdCenter lets you to set ad distribution at the ad group level.
  • Search Network – Adcenter allows search ads to display through one of the 3 options: (1) All Bing and Yahoo search networks and syndicated search partners (default), (2) only Bing and Yahoo search syndicated partners, or (3) only Bing and Yahoo sites in the US and Canada.
  • Language and market settings – Adcenter provides 3 different language settings for US and Canada at the ad group level: (1) United States, (2) English-speaking Canada, and (3) French-speaking Canada.
  • Targeting features – Adcenter enables you to target by age and gender, day of week and time of day, device, and location. Incremental CPC bids in 10 point intervals from 0% to 100% above the base bid can be added to your targeting, when a visitor meets your targeting criteria and clicks on your ad.
  • Website exclusion – Adcenter lets you block up to 500 sites for search ads and content ads at the campaign and ad group levels.
  • Username and password – You can manage multiple Bing Adcenter accounts through one username and password.
  • Conversion tracking – Enable Adcenter conversion tracking and you will have access to Bing Adcenter’s conversion report, goal report, traffic sources report, segment (geographic/demographic) report, and tactics and channels report.

Posted on October 28, 2010
Category: Adcenter | 3 Comments

YouTube Music Day Hong Kong

Google celebrated YouTube’s 5th anniversary/birthday in Hong Kong with the YouTube Music Day.

On the YouTube Music Day (22nd October 2010), music live concert was held at Hong Kong’s International Trade and Exhibition Centre in Kowloon Bay. The entire course of the music concert was also broadcast in live to the public through YouTube. Hong Kong’s singers/bands who participated in YouTube’s music live show include George Lam, Alan Tam, Mr.

Photos of YouTube Music Day Hong Kong

YouTube Music Day in Hong Kong:

    YouTube Music Day Hong Kong

YouTube Music Day’s ticket:

    YouTube Music Day Ticket

YouTube Music Day was live:

    YouTube Music Day Live

YouTube Music Day’s big screen:

    YouTube Music Day Big Screen

About YouTube

Google’s acquisition of YouTube in 2006 proved successful:

  • YouTube has become the number one video sharing website globally.
  • YouTube has always been one of the world’s top 10 highest traffic websites.
  • Google made Adwords video ads, another ad format besides Google’s text ads and Google’s display ads, available on Google’s content network.

YouTube videos became searchable on Google video search after Google’s YouTube acquisition.

Posted on October 23, 2010
Category: Google | Leave a Comment

Submit Sites to Google, Yahoo, Bing Local Business Search

If you own local business stores with physical addresses, submit your business websites to Google’s, Yahoo’s and Bing’s local business listings. Search engine users find local businesses through Google Maps, Yahoo Maps and Bing Maps, so inclusion to search engines’ local business listings will increase your sites’ chances of getting found through Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Google Places (or Google’s Business Listings)

Listing your local business on Google Places is free. Your business listing can include:

  • Phone numbers
  • Physical addresses with ZIP codes
  • Hours of operation
  • Website URL
  • Printable coupons

Google Places allows you to edit individual locations or add/update up to 10,000 locations through Excel spreadsheet format. Your local business listings can take up to 4 weeks to appear on Google Maps after submission.

Submit your website to Google Places. Google officially offers:

Yahoo Local Listing Center

Yahoo offers 2 types of local listings:

  • Basic Listing: You can display a free business listing that consists of phone number, physical address, and web site URL, store hours, and a short description of products and services.
  • Enhanced Listing: You pay USD 9.95 per month to include all the features of a Basic Listing, and can display company logo with tagline, up to 10 photos, detailed business descriptions and online coupons.

Submit your website to Yahoo Local Listing Center.

Bing Local Listing Center

Microsoft Bing Search Engine offers Bing Local Listing Center which is free.

    Bing Local Listings Example Local Restaurants

For example, Bing Local Listing for a local restaurant shows the website URL, locations on Bing’s Maps, editorial reviews and users’ reviews.

Submit your website to Bing Local Listing Center.

SEO Geo-targeting for Small Websites, Local Websites

Besides listing your site on Google Places, Yahoo Local Listing Center and Bing Local Listing Center, optimize your websites for geo-locations:

Discover your sites’ search engine optimization issues with the search engines’ official webmaster tools and improve on SEO:

Posted on October 19, 2010
Category: SEO | 1 Comment

Google Analytics Setup

Google Analytics tracks how many users visit your website and tells you how visitors find and interact with your site. In Google Analytics, web analytics reports about your site are provided with Google Analytics metrics and dimensions, and you can view:

  • Traffic sources, including organic search engines, paid search engines, referring sites (non search engines), social networks, microblogging services (twitter), or emails, that send visitors to your website.
  • Web pages (content) that visitors view.
  • Geographical locations in which visitors are originated from.
  • Ratios of new visitors to returning visitors that visit your site.

To view Google Analytics reports, follow this basic Google Analytics setup guide to track your website’s traffic.

Google Analytics Profiles

Google Analytics profile is a website profile that defines the rules for the reports you can view. Create a Google Analytics profile for your website.

The profile you create will be the interface to display all your Google Analytics reports. A Google Analytics account offers 2 access roles for you to control report access:

  • Administrator access: An administrator has full access to all the profiles under the same Google Analytics account and can make all the changes (including access roles, profiles, filters, goals) to the Google Analytics account. The administrator can assign access to and change access roles of other users. The person who creates the account has administrator access by default.
  • User access: A user has “view” access to reports under profiles that are assigned to him/her.

Each Google Analytics profile is assigned to track one web property (e.g. a domain, www.gordonchoi.com) or multiple web properties (e.g. a site, www.yola.com and a blog, blog.yola.com). Each profile has a unique ID in the format UA-XXXXXX-YY.

You will require to create at least one Google Analytics profile in your account.

Google Analytics Filters

Google Analytics filters can be applied to a profile for restricting data from showing up in Google Analytics reports in the profile. Create filters for your Google Analytics website profiles in one of the 2 ways:

  • Predefined filter: Exclude traffic from a domains, exclude traffic from the IP addresses, or exclude traffic to sub-directories
  • Custom filter: Exclude Pattern, include pattern, search and replace, advanced, or uppercase or lowercase

To track a single domain with sub-directories, no filter is required. Set up Google Analytics filters if your profile needs to track website traffic for:

  • Multiple sub-domains
  • Multiple domains
  • Multiple domains and sub-directories
  • Multiple domains and sub-domains

Google Analytics Conversion Goals

Google Analytics goals can track conversions for your site, including:

  • Member registrations
  • Newsletter sign-ups
  • Purchase confirmations
  • File downloads
  • Views of a page

Create conversion goals from 1 of the 3 goal types that Google Analytics offers:

  • URL Destination
  • Time on Site
  • Pages/Visit

To track keyword conversions of search traffic, Google Analytics reports keywords with conversions for SEO traffic by default. For Google Analytics to report PPC traffic including Google Adwords, Bing Adcenter, Yahoo Search Marketing and Baidu PPC, refer to the setup guides:

Google Analytics Tracking Code Snippets

Google Analytics records each visit to your site through a Javascript-based code snippet.

  • Get the asynchronous tracking code snippet from your Google Analytics account.
  • Install/Insert Google Analytics tracking code into every pages of your website. The tracking code snippet should be inserted within the header area of the HTML pages.

Customize the tracking code if your Google Analytics profile needs to track website traffic for:

  • Multiple sub-domains
  • Multiple domains
  • Multiple domains and sub-directories
  • Multiple domains and sub-domains

Google Analytics Reports

Refer to the definitions of Google Analytics metrics when viewing Google Analytics reports, including:

Visitors Reports:

  • Map Overlay
  • New vs Returning
  • Visitor Trending
  • Visitor Loyalty
  • Mobile

Traffic Sources Reports:

Content Reports:

  • Top Content
  • Content Drilldown
  • Top Landing Pages
  • In-Page Analytics / Site Overlay
  • Site Search
  • Adsense
  • Event Tracking

Goals Reports:

  • Total Conversions
  • Conversion Rate
  • Goal Verification
  • Reverse Goal Path
  • Goal Value
  • Goal Abandoned Funnels
  • Funnel Visualization

Official Google Analytics Installation Guide

Google offers this official installation guide for Google Analytics.

Posted on October 15, 2010
Category: Google Analytics | Leave a Comment

Baidu Content Network

Baidu content-targeted advertising is one of the ways to advertise on Baidu. Through Baidu Phoenix Nest PPC account, you can show your text ads and/or display ads to Baidu’s content network (Beidou Network).

    Baidu Content Network through Baidu Phoenix Nest Interface

Baidu Content Campaigns

To start with Baidu’s Content Network, set a daily budget and create new content-targeted campaigns.

    Create New Content-targeted Campaign

You can also import your search-targeted campaigns (from Baidu PPC/search) and convert them into content-targeted campaigns. When importing a search campaign:

  • Set a maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid for all the ad groups.
  • Import ad groups, ads and keywords by match types into the new content campaign.
  • Exclude IP addresses for all the ad groups.
  • Set geo-locations to default (the entire China) or set geo-locations to specific cities and/or provinces for all the ad groups.
    Import from Search-targeted Campaign

Baidu Content Ad Groups

After creating a new Baidu content-targeted campaign, you should create content-targeted ad groups.

    Create Ad Group for Baidu Content-targeted Campaign

Set up targeting for each ad group with one of the 3 targeting options. You can:

  • Target all the sites within the entire Baidu Content Network.
  • Target websites by categories.
    Ad Group Target by Website Categories
  • Target by top level domain (TLD) names.
    Ad Group Target by Top level domain (TLD) Names

To narrow down where your ads (in your ad groups) are displayed in Baidu’s Content Network:

  • Set geo-locations to default (the entire China) or set geo-locations to specific cities and/or provinces.
  • Add up to 5,000 keywords to each ad group.

To each content ad group:

  • Set a maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid.
  • Select one of the 3 display methods that applies to your ad group’s display ads: display ads within text content on web pages, display ads within header, footer and sidebars of web pages, or display ads in pop-up windows.

Baidu Content Ads

Baidu allows 2 ad formats in the Content Network:

  • Text ads
  • Display ads (or image ads)

Requirements to text ads:

  • Headline: No more than 14 Chinese characters.
  • Description line 1: No more than 20 Chinese characters.
  • Description line 2: No more than 20 Chinese characters.
  • Destination URL: No more than 1024 characters.
  • Display URL: Must be no more than 35 characters and contain your top-level domain name (TLD).

Display ads (or image ads) can be in one of the 18 sizes:

  • 760×90
  • 728×90
  • 1024×60
  • 580×90
  • 468×60
  • 760×75
  • 760×60
  • 960×60
  • 460×60
  • 640×60
  • 960×90
  • 250×250
  • 200×200
  • 336×280
  • 300×250
  • 360×300
  • 160×600
  • 120×600

Posted on October 10, 2010
Category: Baidu PPC | Leave a Comment

Yola Websites

Yola.com offers do-it-yourself (DIY) website building tools for webmasters to quickly create websites. Through Yola’s site building tools, beginners will require no technical skills to create websites.

Yola Website Solutions

Choose a solution from Yola.com:

  • Yola Free: You are charged nothing, but your site will be hosted on a Yola subdomain (e.g. YourSite.Yola.com).
  • Yola Silver: A paid option that will you get everything included in Yola Free, your own domain name, no Yola ads on your web pages, Yahoo Search Marketing / Facebook advertising credits and Fotolia’s stock photography credits.
  • Yola Premier: You pay a flat fee for the first year for everything included in Yola Silver, and in subsequent years you will be billed Yola Silver’s fees. You receive one-on-one professional web design consultation when creating your site.

Yola Features

Add features to your Yola site:

  • Website templates: Use customizable website templates or create your own templates.
  • Payment system: To sell products and/or services through your B2C website, add the built-in Paypal shopping cart to your Yola Website.
  • Ads: Earn money by placing Google Adsense ads on your Yola website.
  • Maps: Add Google Maps to display your physical location of your business.

Tips to Create Small Websites

Yola’s History

Yola was formerly started out as a start-up firm, Synthasite, by Vinny Lingham.

Posted on October 5, 2010
Category: B2C Websites | Leave a Comment

Google SEO Beginners Guide Update

Google re-launched the SEO starter guide for SEO beginners with new updates that include:

  • Glossary that define terms in the guide
  • New examples in image format alongside the content
  • Search engine optimization guidelines for mobile devices

Google’s new SEO guide does not directly mentioned how to increase Google Pagerank, but focuses search engine friendliness by helping webmasters to improve website’s crawling/indexing, ranking and click-through.

Crawling/Indexing

You want Google to index as many web pages of your site as possible.

    Google Indexes eBay.com

To improve GoogleBot’s crawling of your site:

  • Improve the structure of your web pages’ URLs.
  • Improve your site’s navigation.
  • Optimize website page load time.
  • Use robots.txt to block content that GoogleBot should not access.
  • Use Nofollow attribute (rel=”nofollow”) for links to block passing of link juice.

Ranking

Improve your web pages’ ranking by doing on-site web page level optimization.

  • Use heading tags to identify the importance of your web pages’ content.
  • Use descriptive anchor text for all the internal links of your site.
  • Optimize your site’s images by using descriptive ALT tags.
  • Create original and quality content. Avoid cloaking including keyword stuffing.

Click-through

You want to improve the click through rate of your website’s organic search results in SERP.

  • Create unique page title for each web page.
  • Use unique description META tag for each page.
  • To show Google breadcrumbs in SERP, add breadcrumb navigation to your web pages.

Google Search Algorithm, SEO Issues

Since Stephen Noton listed Google, Yahoo and Bing search algorithms, Google’s search algorithm has always been improving.

To revise search engine optimization tips, review:

Use SEM keyword research tools to find out what keywords users are typing when searching for your website’s content. Google’s tools that will help webmasters on search engine optimization include:

Google’s SEO Beginners Guide Download

Download (.PDF) Google’s new SEO starter guide.

Posted on September 29, 2010
Category: Google SEO | Leave a Comment

Google Instant Examples

Google Instant on Google.com starts with a search box at the top of the web search screen:

    Google Instant on Google.com

Type your search query in the search box while “Instant is on”:

    Instant is On

Google Instant Example: PPC Bully

With search query “PPC” in Google’s search box, followed by “b” and space, Google Instant returns organic search results and Adwords ads for keyword “PPC Bully”. Adwords ads and organic search results for keyword “PPC Bully” shows up with one impression added to “PPC Bully”:

    PPCbully, Google Instant

Google Instant Example: PPC Blog

Continue typing till “PPC Bl”, Google Instant returns organic search results and Adwords ads for keyword “PPC Blog“. Adwords ads and organic search results for keyword “PPC Blog” appears with one impression added to “PPC Blog”:

    PPC Blog, Google Instant

Google Instant Example: Adobe

Enter “Ad” into Google’s search box, Google Instant returns organic search results and Adwords ads for keyword “Adobe”. Adwords ads and organic search results for keyword “Adobe” appears with one impression added to “Adobe”:

    Adobe, Google Instant

Google Instant Example: Adwords

Continue typing “w” to search query “Adw” into Google’s search box, Google Instant returns organic search results and Adwords ads for keyword “Adwords“. Adwords ads and organic search results for keyword “Adwords” shows up with one impression added to “Adwords”:

    Adwords, Google Instant

Google Instant Example: Adcenter

Backspace to remove “w” and then add “ce” to search query “Adce” into Google’s search box, Google Instant returns organic search results and Adwords ads for keyword “Adcenter“. Adwords ads and organic search results for keyword “Adcenter” appears with one impression added to “Adcenter”:

    Adcenter, Google Instant

Reports for Search Impressions

Your website’s SEO impressions and/or PPC impressions may fluctuate due to Google Instant.

Posted on September 26, 2010
Category: Google SEO | Leave a Comment

Google Adwords Keyword Report

What is Adwords Keyword Report?

Adwords keyword report provides PPC metrics to your keywords’ performance:

  • Impressions
  • Clicks
  • Click-through-rate (CTR)
  • Average cost-per-click (CPC)
  • Average CPM
  • Cost
  • Average Position
  • Quality Score
  • Destination URL
  • Keyword match type
  • Conversion data, including number of conversions, conversion rate

Where is Adwords Keyword Report?

To find keyword report, sign-in to your Google Adwords account, click “Campaigns” tab and then click “Keywords” tab.

Adwords keyword reports are available to download in CSV, CSV for Excel, TSV, HTML, XML and PDF file formats.

How to Use Adwords Keyword Report

With each Adwords keyword report, you can select segments, create filters, and display/hide columns.

Use Keyword report in conjunction with Adwords search query report to expand new keyword lists and/or create Adwords negative keywords.

Changes to Keyword Report, Adwords Report Center

Adwords Keyword report can be found under Adwords Report Center, but Google has plans to eventually remove all reports from Adwords Report Center.

The reporting changes that are reflected in Google Adwords new interface:

  • The number of reports stored are increased to 100 saved reports from 15 saved reports.
  • Report templates will be removed, but you can create new report templates by clicking “Create Similar” next to any saved reports.

Changes to Campaign Report and Ad Group Report

As Google will be retiring Adwords Report Center, other Adwords reports that have been removed from Adwords Report Center:

  • Campaign report – has been moved to Campaign View.
  • Ad Group report – has been moved to Ad Group View.

Posted on September 21, 2010
Category: Adwords Reports | 1 Comment

t.Baidu.com Baidu Microblog

Baidu launched t.baidu.com in beta which is Baidu’s new microblogging tool/service for Chinese Internet users.

t.baidu.com’s interface and functions are similar to those of Twitter’s (beginners guide to Twitter) and are less similar to those of is different to Google Buzz’s. With t.baidu.com, you get to “follow” other users (following) and you get being “followed” by other users (followers). Each short message is limited to 140 Chinese characters.

t.Baidu.com, Microblogging Tool? Closed Social Networking Site?

However, similar to Facebook, t.baidu.com is “closed” social networking site (SNS) in which you will have to log onto t.baidu.com before you can view any short messages that you and/or others have posted. The content (for example, all the short messages you posted) within t.baidu.com will not show up in any search engines’ organic search results, as they will not be crawled and indexed by search engine spiders/robots (e.g. Googlebot, BaiduSpider, MSNbot, Yahoo Slurp).

t.Baidu.com Subdomain

The reason behind Baidu using the “t” subdomain for t.baidu.com is still unknown, but it may mean:

  • t – Twitter: If Baidu is to clone Twitter, “t” means perfect sense.
  • t – Talk: If t means “talk”, then Baidu has created naming confusion as Google has GTalk which is an instant messaging tool (like MSN Messenger).

Baidu’s Content Targeting / Retargeting

Baidu, the number one Chinese search engine, after officially announcing Baidu Box Computing has been accused of trying to conquer everything in China’s Internet.

Microblogging can be addictive and through t.baidu.com, Baidu will be gaining more Internet users’ personal information. The private information will allow Baidu to improve the quality of Baidu’s Content Network targeting and/or retargeting and to catch up with Google on Adwords Remarketing/Retargeting.

Sign-up t.Baidu.com, Invitation Only

t.baidu.com is currently invitation only. To sign up, you will need to receive invitation from an existing t.baidu.com user.

Posted on September 18, 2010
Category: China SNS | Leave a Comment

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