There’s a new search engine on the block and it’s called Bing.

Microsoft officially launched its new search product today at the D: All things Digital Conference, and CEO Steve Ballmer said it will replace the current Live Search offering beginning June 3rd.  The perennial search also-ran hopes their new product will be a game changer, and a (gorgeous) new promotional website describing the offering certainly offers a lot evidence to support such an ambition.

Bing will incorporate Microsoft’s adCenter, of course, and anticipates offering better targeting to advertisers. If you run PPC ad campaigns via adCenter for Live Search on our Yield Web Marketing Suite, there will be no interruption in service and your ads will display on results pages in Bing once the new service is fully live.

So what’s new and different about Bing? Here’s what we know and what others around the Web are saying.

First, Bing is not just a search engine, according to Ballmer, but a decision engine.  What this means is that Bing delivers not only website links, but actionable information from across multiple sources on the Web within the search results page.  In other words, people doing a search won’t have to click off of Bing to find further information because it will all be there in the results page.

So, for instance, say you’re interested in buying a flight from San Francisco to Paris for a departure in two weeks. You could simply enter “SFO to CDG on June 15″ in the search box.  The results page should show a whole listing of flights available on that date, the prices for each and additional contextual information such as when fares may be lower if you’re able to put off your travel.

According to Search Engine Watch, this kind of functionality will be limited initially by focusing on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.

What’s key here is what is likely an unfolding trend in search. Expect Microsoft to exponentially increase the number of verticals it offers, and for Google and Yahoo! to follow suit with their own versions of these kinds of results pages.

Second, there will be real SEO impacts for websites, according to Forrester.  In their blog post regarding the launch, Shar VanBoskirk writes:

Instead of Bing showing all sites that match the search engine’s algorithm, it will show just three results for a given “subcategory” related to a search.  For example, a search for “Britney Spears” may organize by the subcategories ”biography,” “videos,” “music” and “concert information.”  This means SEO strategies will adjust in order to optimize Web content for select sub categories, rather than select keywords only.

Third, although Microsoft has only about an eight percent share of the search market, these moves will likely have real impacts on search advertisers moving forward.  Much of search marketing relies on users clicking on one or more results in a search results page to investigate and take action on a specific intention. If Bing becomes the new standard for search results, increasing its own market share as a result while pushing Google and Yahoo! to adapt, advertisers will have to pursue new strategies for how they attract traffic to their websites.

For instance, PPC campaigns, which rely on finely-tuned keyword lists among other factors, may need to consider a range of new issues, such as how a product or service may relate to subcategories of a keyword phrase, to achieve both placement and clicks that lead to qualified traffic from paid search results.

So kudos to Microsoft.  They have created a lot of great positive buzz around their new search engine and seem positioned, finally, to take on their more established rivals Google and Yahoo!.  And speaking of market share, Microsoft is planning to spend a lot of money promoting Bing, according to 5 Blogs Before Lunch:

They’re launching Bing with a reported $80 million to $100 million advertising campaign. That’s on top of Microsoft’s current $300 million+ ad spend. Compare that to the $25 million Google spent on all of its advertising last year (source: TNS Media Intelligence)–but then again Google has always dissed the idea of advertising, and marketing in general.

One hundred million dollars for a product launch? Now that’s a marketing budget!

Set Up Your Account On Twitter Wisely. When you first set up your account, be sure to pick a user name that is easily / readily associated with your business.  At Yield Software we use “YieldSW” on Twitter and everywhere else.  If your business is named Kathy’s Kupcakes, choose “kathyskupcakes” as your user name.  (Hopefully that’s not a real business! If it is, I swear that was a random choice.)

Remember this formula: Followers = Social Capital; Social Capital = Success. You can begin to build followers by first uploading your address book to Twitter to discover who is already on Twitter.  Follow all those people.  They will get an email saying you’re now following them and will be given the opportunity to follow you in return.  Put a “follow me on Twitter” button on your Website, blog, email auto-signature and business cards.  You can also see who’s following Yield Software on twitter.com/YieldSW or any other account you follow, and then choose to follow some or all of those folks.  They, in turn, may follow you.  Finally, you can go to sites like whoshouldifollow.com and summize.com to see recommendations about others you might like to follow.  The more people following you the greater the opportunity for you to intersect with folks who will find benefit from your business.  So get out there and start raising some social capital!

Get Organized and Be Efficient. There are a number of things you can do and tools you can leverage to make your tweeting enterprise more productive.  First, when you sign up for Twitter be sure to enable the mobile phone feature so you can send updates to Twitter via SMS text message. If you have an iPhone, download one of a number of great Twitter apps (I use Tweetie). If you manage more than one Twitter account (i.e., one for personal use and one for professional purposes) you can manage these efficiently from you desktop using the Hootsuite.com web application; the Seesmic desktop app also enables you to track multiple accounts.  If you’re managing just one account, use TweetDeck or Seesmic, which are both cool desktop applications (built in Adobe Air), to not only keep track of the folks you follow in real time, but to add your own updates; set up saved searches for topics you care most about; monitor tweets from or about your key competition; and to search for or follow folks who are new to you. (Links to helpful services can be found at the end of this post.)

Synch Twitter with Other Social Networks. Using FriendFeed, you can manage all the content for your social Web subscriptions in one place.  Using the simple interface, you can add your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Yelp and many other accounts to keep them all coordinated.  Then, when you add a new tweet to your Twitter stream, your Facebook update, for instance, will be automatically populated with the same message, thus enabling you to keep your followers up to date no matter where it is they typically find you. (The Tweetie app on my iPhone automatically updates both Twitter and my Facebook news feed; increasingly, these sorts of cross-platform update features are being built into social and other Web environments.)

Never, Ever Forget Twitter is a Broadcast Medium. Once you’ve hit the “enter” key, it’s out there.  Forever.  And can’t be taken back.  So don’t take tweeting for business purposes too lightly.  Tweeting when angry or with a few cocktails under your belt can have terrible consequences for your business relationships.  When sending a tweet, always – ALWAYS – double check your message before hitting “send”.  The best rule of thumb is to be respectful at all times.  You can still be charming or funny or ironic or serious – but don’t send a tweet you wouldn’t be comfortable using in a conversation with one of your customers.

Tweet Often, But Not Too Often. Folks follow you because you regularly tweet about things they find useful or interesting or entertaining.  By grabbing a spare moment here or there to blast out a tweet via text message, for instance, you’re reminding folks that you – AND your business – are open, available and ready to engage.  Each and every tweet need not be substantive, but neither should every one of your tweets be completely silly.  A good friend and serial entrepreneur, Dave Sifry, has a simple personal motto that he lives by, which is “be of service.”  I keep this motto in mind every time I tweet (though I do slip in quite a few “lifecast” tweets about my lunch, my dog or the weather, which I hope provides the service of levity from time-to-time!)

Folks who begin using Twitter for the first time almost immediately discover there is a vocabulary in use throughout the “twitterverse” that can, at first, feel confusing.  Over time, you’ll begin to see the logic of it all and will incorporate this vocabulary into your own without really realizing it.  To get you started, here’s a few translations for you:

Twitter: The proper name of the social networking phenomenon, officially known as “micro-blogging”, which enables people to update their followers with posts of no more than 140 characters.

Tweet: A posting of no more than 140 characters to one’s followers on Twitter.

Twitterverse: The total universe of people actively using Twitter.

Twitterati: The most engaged users of Twitter; the folks who are avid users and understand the rules, conventions and social mores of the twitterverse.

Lifecasting: The practice of tweeting about every little thing you do, think, see or experience throughout your day. Some do this very, very well and the tweets are compelling and entertaining. Lifecasting is a particular talent, however, and I recommend following those who are good at it for a while before attempting this yourself.

Auto-DM: A much-hated, much-derided, but still over-used way of automatically responding (literally “automatic direct message”) to someone who follows you with a canned response. For instance, say I just followed you and a moment later I get this automatic direct-response tweet from you: “Thanks for following! Check out my website at www.iamsodarnirritating.com!!”  Everyone hates these and the twitterati looks down their collective nose at those who use auto-DM to tweet.

The “@” Symbol.  This is important. When addressing or referring to another in the twitterverse you do it by using their user name or handle (for Yield Software it’s “YieldSW”).  So, instead of tweeting “I love Yield Software!”, you’d tweet “I love @YieldSW!” (and we love you, too.)

The “D” Convention. When you want to send a direct message to someone on Twitter, but don’t want the whole Twitterverse to see it, add a “D” at the beginning of your tweet, followed by a space and the user name of the person you’re addressing on Twitter. (In Twitter, Seesmic, TweetDeck, HootSuite, Tweetie and other Twitter apps there are buttons that enable direct repsonses.) So, to tell Yield Software you need help with setting up multivariate testing of a landing page you’d send this tweet: “D YieldSW I need some help setting up multivariate testing.” Remember: in order to direct-message someone, you must be following them AND they must be following you.

The “RT” Convention. When you see a tweet that you like or feel would be informative to all those following you, you can “retweet” that post.  Everyone following you will see the retweet and the person who originally wrote the post will see that you retweeted it, which promotes a lot of good will among the twitterati. Most Twitter apps have a retweet button to make this easy and efficient. Or you can copy a tweet, paste it into the message box and put “RT” and the “@username” of the original poster in front, and hit the post button. So, say I just sent out a tweet from @YieldSW that you see in your Twitter feed as: “YieldSW Our customers totally rock.”  You could retweet this by copying and pasting this tweet into the message box on Twitter and typing “RT @” in front of “YieldSW” (there’s no space between “@” and “YieldSW”.)

The “#” Convention.  The hash symbol (”#”) is a way to add tags to your tweets.  Tags provide context or identifying information that enables more efficient searches across the twitterverse. (Think of the dogtags folks in the military wear around the their necks, which provide identifying information about a service member should they become injured.) For instance: you might tweet “Yield’s Web Marketing Suite has improved the ROI on my PPC campaigns. #SEM”  This means that your tweet refers to the Search Engine Marketing profession. When someone does a search on Twitter to see recent tweets about Search Engine Marketing or SEM, the #SEM tag helps the engine capture your tweet in the search results.  Folks also use it around specific events. When the popular South-by-Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas was in full swing, thousands of people were blasting hundreds of thousands of tweets either beginning or ending with the tag #SXSW.  Still others will use the hash tag as a way of communicating context. For instance: “I just got a new puppy. #happy”

A Summary of Useful Links

www.twitter.com

www.friendfeed.com

www.tweetdeck.com

www.seesmic.com

www.hootsuite.com

www.tweetvolume.com

Tweetie for iPhone

For more blog posts in this series, go here.

When you view a search result page in Google, Yahoo! Search or Microsoft Live Search, you almost always see two kinds of results: sponsored links and natural search results.  On Google, for instance, sponsored links can be found on the top and right-hand sections of the page, while natural (or organic) search results can be found in the main section of the page.  At the bottom of the page, you’ll typically see that the page is one of many, many pages of results.

Google Search Result Page

Yahoo! Search Result Page

Microsoft Live Search Result Page

The way in which advertisers (you!) get into the sponsored links sections of those pages is through a bidding process.  Each of the three main players – Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft – have their own bid management platform, which are similar but which also have their own unique ways of getting to the same outcome: paid links on relevant search engine results pages.

So: what does “relevant search engine results pages” mean?

Because searches are typically intention-based – that is, someone will enter one or more words into a search box to find something they’re seeking – advertisers want to be sure their ads show up on pages where the searcher’s intention closely matches the advertiser’s product or service.  This is why the term “keyword” is so important to search marketing and PPC campaign management in particular.

Knowing what keywords searchers will likely employ and that most often relate to your company’s products is critical.  Sometimes this is easy. If you sell red Converse sneakers, for instance, it’s a good bet that the keyword “Converse” is a good one for you, but so is “sneakers” and maybe even “red”.   Over time, advertisers become very knowledgeable about what keywords perform best for them in their PPC campaigns and which do not.  As a result, most advertisers treat their keyword lists as “state secrets” and keep them closely guarded.

Very often, a key goal of PPC campaign management is to get as high up as possible on relevant search result pages as possible.  While being the highest bidder is usually the best way to get to the number one position, there are other variables at work.

Wikipedia offers some insight:

Typically the highest bidder for each keyword will be listed at the top of the search engine listings page. However in recent years the quality and relevance of the landing page (the page to which the sponsored result links) have been added to the algorithm to determine placement.

Pay-per-click campaigns have many, many other variables that can be included, but at a high-level these are the basics.  So, in summary, the three things that are most critical to undertaking a PPC advertising campaign are: have a good idea what keywords are best for you; understand your budget and what it typically costs to bid on your keywords; and be sure the place where your link resolves – your landing page or pages – use the keywords you’ve bid on, and are relevant to the searcher’s intention.

Increasingly, businesses and organizations are deriving their primary traffic – and revenues – from clicks on links in search engine results pages.  Which is why more and more business owners are looking for ways to advertise their products and services through search marketing.  For those already engaged in search marketing, many are looking to how it is they can manage the process more effectively and efficiently.  And all businesses are keenly interested in how it is they can get their ads placed as high up as possible on the first page of results.

Small Plug: Yield Software actively manages PPC campaigns for you because it’s a fully automated and powered by advanced algorithms.  For people new to search marketing, our simple, intuitive systems get you up and going in no time, guiding you through each step of the process.  From determining ideal keywords to setting up campaigns, from managing your budgets to optimizing your landing pages, Yield makes it easy to get started.

For people who are more experienced but who seek to save time and get better results, Yield’s fully automated Web Marketing Suite is designed to do all the critical work for you – 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

For more information about how we can help you with your web marketing efforts, click here.

To see more blog posts in our Introduction to Web Marketing Series, go here.

When you view a search engine result page in Google, Yahoo! Search or Microsoft Live Search, you almost always see two kinds of results: Sponsored Links, which advertisers pay to place on the page, and natural search results.  On Google, for instance, sponsored links can be found on the top and right-hand sections of the page, while natural (or organic) search results can be found in the main section of the page.  At the bottom of the page, you’ll typically see that the page is one of many, many pages of results.

The goal of SEO is to improve the volume and quality of traffic coming to your website from natural search results—traffic that is acquired for free. Obviously, sites that appear very high up on the first page of natural search results tend to see the greatest numbers of clicks and, therefore, traffic.  Which is why businesses, organizations, publications, and information and entertainment sites are increasingly concerned with how they can move links to their sites as high up on page one of natural search results as possible.

Search engines evaluate whether your page is relevant based on a variety of secret and not-so secret criteria.  Most of these criteria are designed to ensure that your page has content relative to the searches query.  This has two effects: first, searchers will be more satisfied with the results provided by the search engine and will become loyal users; and second, advertisers will be willing to pay more for advertising as the search engine will have more loyal and satisfied users.

Determining the keywords that naturally pertain to your business and service – the words that people will naturally enter into search boxes for information about any given topic – is an important first step in optimizing your site for search engines.  Once you’re clear what these keywords are, it’s important to be sure those keywords are represented in the content of your website.

It’s important to note here that each of your pages should be about a specific, unique topic, and not something broad and not something that is trying to match for multiple concepts.  SEO is competitive so you can’t be all things to all people.  It’s also important that you include your keywords in your site’s content in a way that’s both natural and intuitive – simply stuffing a bunch of keywords in your site’s content, for instance, will be a flag to the major search engines that something’s not quite right.

Next, you should make sure your pages are listed with the search engines (you can submit links to each search engine).

Another important step in SEO is ensuring that the title of each of the pages in your website are constructed in such a way that search engines can instantly relate them to relevant keywords searches.  If you’re not the webmaster for your website – that is, if you didn’t build it yourself – it may be difficult to understand how to change these page titles, as they are in the HTML code for your pages and invisible to you when viewing it.

One of the ways in which the major search engines determine the page ranking for your web pages also depends on the number and the quality of third-party links to your pages.  Again, these links must be natural – that is, they shouldn’t be a part of a dishonest linking scheme, as the major search engines have gotten very good at detecting these.

Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft have tons of other ways to determine how it is your site will rank on a search result page for any given keyword query.  So it is the best policy to fill your website with content that is an honest reflection of your goods and services, as well as a reflection of the customers you do serve and whom you seek to serve.

Over time many people have concocted shady ways of getting at SEO for websites.  According to Wikipedia:

[A] class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or Spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.

It is through authentic, high-integrity website creation – designed with your customers in mind first and foremost – that you are most likely to succeed in optimizing your site for the major search engines.

Small Plug: take a 30-day free trial of our Yield Web Marketing Suite, which includes fully automated processes for optimizing your website for search engines.  You get very practical, highly actionable to-do lists for improving and optimizing your website that are simple to understand and easy to act on.  SEO doesn’t have to be hard or intimidating, and we’d love to show you how.

For more information on the Yield Web Marketing Suite, go here.

To see Google’s guidelines for building and optimizing websites, go here.

To see more blog posts in our Introduction to Web Marketing Series, go here.

Unlike outdoor advertising (i.e. billboards) or radio and television ads, where precise correlations to ROI can be elusive, search engine marketing (SEM) enables marketers to track interactions and behavior at every step of engagement.

Though a huge number of web marketing professionals employ display advertising on sites like NYTimes.com or FOXNews.com or Yahoo!, a growing share of marketing dollars are being directed to the search engines and specifically pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.  By buying the “Sponsored Links” you see on search result pages on Google, Yahoo Search or Microsoft Live Search, marketers are able to track: (a) clicks on an ad link; (b) arrival at a website’s landing page; (c) what visitors do once on the site; and (d) whether or not that visitor converts to a paying customer.

Once a visitor converts to a paying customer, web marketers are able to do an ROI analysis on that particular individual and across all customers who similarly converted to paying customers from the same campaign.  By comparing the total amount spent to acquire customers through a web marketing campaign to the amount of revenue generated by those who clicked on links and converted to paying customers, a campaign ROI can be quickly calculated.

Obviously, most web marketers want to make at least one more dollar than it cost to execute the campaign.  And, there are some instances where web marketers will make well-calculated decisions to arrive at a negative ROI in order to achieve their campaign objectives (for instance, you might decide that acquiring a large volume of new traffic within a tight timeframe, even if there is a negative ROI, is the right long-term strategy for your site).  But ideally, campaigns will perform much better than either of these scenarios and the degree to which a campaign’s ROI is impressive or not will have much to do with a number of factors.  These include:

Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaign Management.  Achieving excellent placement in the Sponsored Links sections of search results pages is a holy grail of search marketers.  There are a number of factors that ensure a PPC campaign is well managed and optimized for the best outcomes.  These include keyword lists, bid management, geo-targeting choices, product pricing and promotion decisions, etc.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  While it is important to actively and accurately manage paid search campaigns, it is equally as important to ensure websites rank high in natural (or organic) search results.  Clicks on these links are free to the advertiser and can effectively lower the overall cost of a web marketing campaign when averaged with paid customer acquisition.  By effectively optimizing a website for search engines, web marketers can ensure the same paid links appear high up in natural (and therefore free) search results.

Landing Page Optimization (LPO).  Clicks from both paid and natural search results must resolve to a web page that is optimized for converting first-time or returning visitors into paying customers.  And, LPO is also concerned with keeping the sales cycle as short as possible.  There are both simple and sophisticated ways to manage how such pages are optimized—either dynamically or in limited tests.  Landing pages can be the homepage of a website, but more experienced web marketers will typically create a specialized landing page that ties directly to the links that generated the clicks in the first place.

Anyone interested in embarking on a web marketing campaign should do so with a measurement plan in mind.  Being able to justify the time and expense of such efforts is critical in understanding the best ways in which to attract and profitably retain customers.  So time for a Small Plug: our Yield Web Marketing Suite is a fully automated and fully integrated set of powerful modules to enable you to easily set up and manage your web marketing efforts.  And to effectively measure the ROI on your efforts.  It’s ideal for small businesses and those with limited marketing resources.  Even more sophisticated web marketers use Yield Software to make the management and tracking of campaigns fast, easy and profitable.

For more information about our Yield Web Marketing Suite, go here.

To see more blog posts in our Introduction to Web Marketing Series, go here.