PSU's 2010 Digital Marketing Conference

Besides, who doesn’t want to escape the cold frigid winter of Minnesota for a few days of mild overcast and above freezing weather in Portland?

PSU's 2010 Digital Marketing Conference

This conference will be held on Monday, December 13th at PSU’s Lincoln Hall. We invite you to come down, stop by and say hello to the WebRanking team. We will also be debuting our handy new guides to Portland Online that day, so you will want to make sure you pick one up.

If you haven’t registered yet for this conference, hurry as the conference fee will be going to full price on Wednesday, December 8th. For more information, please visit the Digital Marketing Conference website.

MnSEM

MnSEM will be having it’s first official event Thursday, November 18th, 2010. Join MnSEM at the “Search Party: MnSEM Launch”. Get to know MnSEM and our members with an evening of networking, drinks, and of course talking search!

There are a few tickets left so register today!: Registration Closed

MnSEM is looking for feedback from the search community on what they would like to see in the way of resources, support and meet-ups in the Twin Cities. We’re currently gathering members at our group on Linkedin to connect search engine marketing folks. Visit the Official MnSEM LinkedIn group page for more details.

Who Should Attend MnSEM

As the Portland Community Manager for Yelp.com, the number one question I hear from business owners is: How do I make Yelp work for me? The value of positive consumer reviews (and even some negative ones) to sustain and grow business is beyond obvious, but in a social media market dominated by broadcasting tools, Yelp’s model for business/consumer interaction can be a learning curve for some. Here are some do’s and don’ts to help you reap the benefits of the lush information available in consumer reviews.

1. Do: Join the conversation!

Last month alone, Yelp had more than 38 Million Visitors

How, you ask? By unlocking your Business Owner Account on Yelp, you have access to a bevy of tools that allow you to do things like track page hits, post special offers and announcements, respond to reviews (both publicly and privately), add and correct information about your business like address and phone number, complete an About This Business summary, recommend other businesses, and share your business’ history.

What does Pay Per Click Fraud, Fake Leads and Identity Theft have in common? Answer: The Google AdWords Display Network

Ladies and gentlemen: the story you are about to read is true. Not even the names have been changed to protect the innocent. What follows is an account of what at first seemed like a few fraudulent leads, but upon closer inspection included stolen personal information, unscrupulous AdSense publishers and a blind eye turned by those making money through these deceptive means.

Google AdWords Display Network (formerly the Content Network)

Following, are just the facts…

Leads for top level, well known brands, at least for our boutique search agency, don’t come around every day. Or even every month for that matter. And when they do, they usually don’t fill out the “Free Consultation” request form.

And you certainly don’t get 9 in a one week time period.

In The Beginning…

As proud sponsors of Ignite Portland 9 we were tasked with creating a 30 second promotional video to be played during the event’s intermission at the Bagdad theater. Our original idea was to create a 70’s stylized buddy cop movie trailer with my 1 year old son, but when the “Lil’ Dictator” was more inclined to eat the fake mustache than he was to wear it, we decided to go in a new direction.

While only one of WebRanking’s “two bad brothers you know so well” were available for the filming of the trailer, Tony and I decided to move forward without the “one lone Beastie” and create our own version of Sabotage. While WebRanking certainly have no aspirations of leaving the Search Engine Marketing community after 12 ½ years in order to pursue film making, we did enjoy the process plus it gave me an excuse to sport a mustache for the past couple of months.

The above video is the complete trailer, which is different from the 30 second teaser shown at Ignite Portland 9 and which can be viewed below.

Hummm. It is Friday afternoon so I guess this falls in line with the timing of most of Google’s tests and new feature roll outs, like when they tested their left side search tool on Friday, April 2nd that was Officially Launched on Thursday, May 6th or when they Tested Olympic Logos in Search Pages on Friday, February 19th.

The following screen shot indicates that Google is testing a new “Related to” pay per click text ad segmentation format in the search results pages. While, IMO, these look a little out of place, they may actually function better for users to help identify ad groupings that may interest them.

New Google Sponsored PPC Text Ads Segmentation for Keyword: Local

New Pay Per Click Keyword Match Types

After spending a month running and analyzing modified broad match keywords in a few Canadian AdWords campaigns, we developed a few matching techniques and initial bidding strategies that are represented in the following infograph. We feel that this is a better representation of the tiered levels of match type bidding, traffic potential and keyword matching. In particular we have expanded upon the new BMM match types with 3 possible levels of matching that we call: “Anchor Modified Broad Match“, “Dual Anchor Modified Broad Match“, and “Fully Modified Broad Match“.

Google AdWords Pay Per Click Keyword Match Types: Broad, Anchor Modified, Dual Anchor, Full Modified, Phrase and Exact Match.

First off, before I get into praising _(below) the new Google AdWords’ Broad Match Modifier (BMM), let me state for the record that I have been extremely disappointed with Google’s “Expanded Broad Match” since it’s inception!

Why?

Well, when Google AdWords first changed their normal Broad Match keyword targeting to this Expanded Matching option, I half jokingly referred to it as their new Pay Per Click “Money Algorithm”. This term seemed to fit very well because this “Mo-gorithm” took perfectly good broad keywords and corrupted their individual intent by algorithmically matching them to many different words for the sake of displaying higher bidded terms over many queries, thus inflating competition for search impressions and causing AdWords advertisers to lose a substantial amount of control of their targeting capabilities.

Here is an example of the loss of control and “Expanded Targeting” that Google’s current broad match triggers:

The Lil' Dictator

I’ve only been a Dad now for a little over 9 months, but through this crash course called parenthood I’ve managed to pick up some solid life lessons that are applicable not only to fatherhood, but also to my day job as a social media marketer (and addict). With Father’s Day right around the corner, I thought I’d share the 4 things that Fatherhood has taught me about being successful in Social Media.