The enhancements include:

Content Network Support – Create and launch campaigns on the Google and Bing content networks so your text ads can appear on third-party websites

Display Network Support – Create and launch campaigns that leveraging graphical (also known as “display” or “banner”) advertising on the Google Display Network

Mobile Network Support – Target mobile users by creating and launching mobile advertising campaigns on the Google Mobile and Bing Mobile Networks



Multiple Ad Creation Wizard – Easily create multiple versions of your search, content, display and/or mobile advertising with real-time ad validation

Ad Cloning – Easily create copies of your existing ads and even versions of those ads targeted for different publishers and network types (e.g. display, mobile, etc.)

Improved Bid Optimization – We have continued to make significant advances in our bid optimization technology to deliver even better results for your online advertising campaigns.

Improved SEO Inbound Link Analysis – Our link analyzer has been enhanced to more accurately track inbound links and benchmark your link building performance comparatively against other websites

Scheduling Standard Reports – You can now schedule the Natural Search Report, Paid Search Report and Landing Page Optimization reports to be automatically run and emailed to you on a weekly or monthly basis.

Improved Power Editing – We have exposed more statistics for you to view and now all the statistics can be searched and sorted

Real-Time Task Monitoring – You can now view and track the status of campaign imports and custom report processes as well as receive real-time notifications when these tasks complete

We hope you enjoy them and as always, if you have any questions, feedback or issues, please don’t hesitate to contact us at support@yieldsoftware.com.

In this third and final post on last minute Web marketing strategies for the 2010 Holiday Season, we tackle mobile.  There’s a number of ways you can position yourself for success vis-à-vis mobile devices, and because more and more people use their smart phones to locate products and services on the go it’s in your best interest to make sure your mobile strategy is in place.

1. Search, Source, Activate

The primary way shoppers use their smart phones while on-the-go is to search for a product or the location of a particular retailer, or both.  Which is why it’s critical you’re optimized for local search, particularly if you have multiple locations.  Google and Bing are emphasizing local search results and maps more than ever in search results.  Mobile users are also doing quick comparisons either of similar products or similar retailers of those products, so make sure you’re also optimized on Yelp and other review sites.  The more good reviews you can show for your products or service, the better.

2. Optimize PPC Ads to Drive Retail Traffic

Use headlines and ad copy that talk about in-store promotions.  You can also include a local phone number that folks can tap to instantly generate a phone call to a store.  Make sure whatever click-through URL you use will take folks to a light-weight, mobile-optimized landing page so that it loads fast and is easy to read.  When combined with natural search listings that highlight local, maps and reviews, a smart PPC campaign may just tip the scales in your favor.

3. Sync Online and Offline Inventory

If you offer a product or service online, make sure it’s also available in your retail store.  Folks will often look to see if you offer something online and then dash into your store to buy.  If it’s not in stock, you’ll have an irritated customer on your hands, so make sure inventory is coordinated between online and in-store locations.

4.  Mobile Coupons and Promo Codes

Use coupons and promo codes to seal the deal and get folks through your doors. Use promo codes in PPC ads.  Make a mobile coupon available on your Web site that folks can show a cashier at check-out.  Also make use of Foursquare, which offers a number of features that provide incentives for shoppers to choose your store.  And, use services like Groupon to drive coupon adoption (and viral sharing of your offers).  As we discussed before, consumers are more cost-conscious than ever and are looking for deals around every corner.

5. Make Check-out Easy (and Mobile)

If your employees have smart phones (and I’m sure most do), put a Square credit card processor on each one to enable everyone in your store to do check-outs wherever they may be helping a customer. If you’ve got the budget, you can provide an iPod Touch to each employee with a Square attached. You can also use Square on iPads.  Not only does this avoid lines at the check-out counters, it provides another level of intimacy between your shoppers and the person in your store helping them.  And because you’ll need to email receipts, you also get to collect your customers’ email addresses for future marketing uses.

Black Friday and Internet Monday are just a few days away.  By putting a few last minute touches on your Holiday 2010 marketing program, you might just make a good holiday season into a great one.  Good luck and Happy Holidays!

Yahoo! Search senior vice president Shashi Seth announced today that a key milestone in the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance has been achieved: Bing now powers 100 percent of Yahoo’s organic (or natural) search results.  Apparently this is the case now for both the desktop product and mobile.

“Yahoo! Web, Image, and Video search experiences on both desktop and mobile devices are now powered by the Microsoft platform in the US and Canada (English), with more markets to come,” said Seth. “The speed in which this was completed is a testament to the great work and partnership between a number of Yahoo! and Microsoft employees, the ranks of which are numerous.”

Earlier this month, Yahoo! and Microsoft representatives reported that the transition was underway and that just about 25 percent of Yahoo’s natural search results and about three percent of paid search results were, at that point, powered by Bing.  They had set as early October the complete transition for both aspects of search, so completing the organic piece of the integration just a few weeks later is testament to the speed with which the joint team is executing.  There has been significant concern among search marketing professionals that the integration of the two platforms might not be completed in time for the all-important holiday season, so achievement of this first milestone will come as some relief to all concerned.

“We continue to work hard on the migration to adCenter, and are optimistic about completing this phase later this fall,” said Satya Nadella, senior vice president, online services division at Microsof.  ”As we have said all along, our primary goal is to provide advertisers with a quality transition experience in 2010, while being mindful of the holiday season.”

For folks who’s organic or natural search rank on Microsoft’s Bing is lower than what it was in Yahoo! Search, it’s very important to begin working on your website to optimize it for the Bing search algorithm.  Use your tools in the Natural Search Optimizer module of the Yield Web Marketing Suite to ensure your site is in the best possible condition and to check your rank in Bing.  Also, for further information, check out the Bing Toolbox for webmasters. And, as always, if you have questions, email or call our Customer Success Reps who are available to assist you.

In yesterday’s Yahoo! Search Blog, they announced that they’ve begun a test incorporating Microsoft’s Bing search results in their pages.  They are displaying both natural and paid search results, but only in about 25 percent of Yahoo’s search results pages.  Here’s what you can expect to see:

Further, Yahoo! says their mobile search product will begin to incorporate Bing mobile search results in the coming weeks and months.  Notable is Yahoo’s assertion that they will “continue to innovate and enhance the overall consumer experience around those core listings.”  This means that while the search results themselves will be generated by Bing, other on-page features or enhancements will be driven by the Yahoo! Search team.

For this and other reasons, you will continue to see how your keywords rank in natural search results across Google, Yahoo! and Bing throughout and following completion of the Yahoo!-Bing search integration within the Yield Web Marketing Suite and our Natural Search Optimizer.  It is entirely possible that your keywords may rank slightly differently across Yahoo! and Bing based on a variety of factors throughout the integration process.

For all of our customers, rest assured we remain on top of these changes and will work to ensure all changes are seamless to you, even as we continue to keep you abreast of these changes as they’re occurring.  If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact your customer success rep.

One of the best ways to ensure your website ranks well for your most important keywords in natural search results is through in-bound links to your site.  But how do you attract them (short of begging other website owners to link to you)?  We’ve got some tips and tricks below that will help you build links to your website.

Before we get started, though, just a quick reminder about links, link juice and the social etiquette of linking:

First, not all links are created equal.  Google, Yahoo! and Bing all evaluate links to your website relative to the quality of the source of the link.  So, for instance, if you get a link from The New York Times it’s vastly more important to the search engines than if Yield Software links to you (we hope one day soon we’ll be in the same league!)  In practical terms, what this means is that the NYT link has more juice than the Yield link, and when the algorithm is determining what your page rank should be, it’s weighing the link juice of each individual link.  Other types of sites that provide powerful link juice are links from .gov sites and links from .edu sites, in addition to links from mainstream media source sites or very popular blogs such as BoingBoing or ReadWriteWeb.

Second, link unto others as you would have the link to you.  If you hope to generate lots of great links to your site, you must also be someone who sensibly links regularly.  The social etiquette of the Web dictates that website and blog owners conscientiously link to the sources of news, information, reference material or other sources of content; this, in turn, will inspire web publishers to link to you.  By declaring you’re a good netizen, people will want to engage you more.

Now, on to those recommendations!

“Top” Lists

One of the all-time best ways to get people to link to your content is through lists.  For instance, the top 10 best ways to evaluate a purchase.  Or three things to consider when making a purchasing.  Remember that your “Top” lists should have some relevance to what your site is all about, but SHOULD NOT be an overt promotion of or commercial about your products and services.  These should be objectively helpful lists that people would intuitive want to share with friends or colleagues or family members (for instance, in their own blogs or via a tweet on Twitter or in a post on Facebook.)

Video

After social networks, like Facebook, video is the hottest segment of the Web.  People can’t get enough of video!  So a good way to get people to link to your site or your blog is use video.  It’s super easy to embed a video in your site (especially if you’re publishing your website or blog on a content management system like WordPress).  As with “Top” lists, be sure to choose videos that relevant to what you do, sell or serve.  If you produce and publish your own videos (which you should!), again, make sure you’re doing something that is going to be useful to people.  How-to videos are hugely popular on the Web, particularly if it’s about something emerging that people want to do but don’t yet understand.

Photos

Believe it or not, photos are still very popular and capture people’s eye.  Photos that capture an amazing moment, or are somehow instructional in nature can always drive interest, links and traffic to your site.

Downloadable Content

Publish content on your site that is new, unique or unlike something folks can get elsewhere.  Perhaps it’s a how-to guide relating to your industry or the services you provide.  If you have the budget, commission a white paper or a study on some important aspect of the work you do.  Or maybe you’ve been doing a great job with your blog over the last few years and have a collection of blog posts that, when taken together, make a terrific e-book on a subject relating to your business or work.  There are a whole number of online e-book publishing sites that enable fast and easy production, and which you can then offer for free download on your site.  It’s easy to say, “oh, no one cares as much as I do about the thing I do” — but guess what: you’re NOT that unique!  If you love what you do, chances are there are a whole bunch of people (potentially tens of thousands, even) who share your interests and passion.

Graphs and Graphics

Another great, link-worthy strategy for your website and blog is the use of graphs and graphics.  From simple charts and graphs created by Excel to timeline graphics, tag cloud graphics and workflow illustrations, folks love great visuals that bring into specific relief that which may be difficult to imagine.  There are many free or low-cost graphic creation tools across the Web (do a search!) that enable you to simply plug in a number of data points and return a beautiful illustration that you can copy and publish.  If you have a little budget, you can also always hire graphic artists to create stunning visualizations of either data or workflow or technology stacks (among many other options.)

At the end of the day, content, even in the 21st century, is still king.  If you consistently publish good stuff on your website and blog, it will be link-worthy.  And when you do publish, don’t be shy about publicizing that fact.  You should copy the URL of your new content and paste it into tweets on Twitter, your Facebook updates, your LinkedIn updates and any other sites where you can provide updates of what you’re working on.

Once you’ve gotten into a rhythm, be sure to see how your site is ranking for your keywords across Google, Yahoo! and Bing. If you’re a Yield Software customer, you can do this quickly and conveniently by clicking on the Natural Search tab in the Yield Web Marketing Suite and checking your link counts.  You’ll also be able to see the sources of those links so you can evaluate how well you’re doing in terms of link juice / link source quality.

As a result, Yield Software is temporarily pausing its interface with Microsoft Bing’s systems until they have resolved the issue.

For customers with LIVE Bing campaigns:

Your campaigns will continue to operate as you’ve specified without interruption.

We will not be able to show statistics for the Bing component of your pay-per-click advertising campaigns during this interruption of service.

Once the issue has been resolved, our systems will rebuild your campaign statistics with Bing and you should experience no loss of performance data.

Live campaigns that ALSO include Google and Yahoo! Search will not be affected and you will continue to see your campaign performance statistics.

For customers seeking to initiate a NEW campaign on Bing:

You will be unable to deploy your new campaign until this interruption in service is resolved.

Once the interruption in service is resolved, our systems will deploy your new campaign exactly as you have specified.

For customers seeking to initiate a NEW campaign on Bing AND on Google and / or Yahoo! Search:

You will be unable to deploy your new campaign until this interruption in service is resolved.

Once the interruption in service is resolved, our systems will deploy your new campaign exactly as you have specified.

Please rest assured Yield Software is working closely with Microsoft’s Bing team and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.  If you have questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to email us at support[at]yieldsoftware[dot]com, or call our toll-free number at 1-877-943-5379 Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. PDT.

Twitter is suddenly more all over the news than usual. So what’s all buzz?

Turns out, lot’s of things.

First, let’s start with the big event: today was the first day of Twitter’s inaugural developers’ conference called Chirp. This is a gathering of just under 100 geeks at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts who build applications that rely on Twitter feeds (or APIs) to provide a Twitter-related service to end-users (that would be you and me.) Company co-Founder and CEO, Evan Williams said that developers using the Twitter API make about three billion calls a day into the service.

These applications make it easier for individuals and businesses to, for instance, send tweets from their desktops or mobile devices across multiple accounts (Seesmic or TweetDeck), or to send pictures via Twitter (TwitPic), or to analyze how well you or your brand is doing in the Twitterverse.

Second, a bunch of numbers were announced today. Company co-Founder Biz Stone said Twitter now has nearly 106 million registered users and adds about 300,000 new users per day worldwide. So, that’s a lot. What’s really notable is that about 75 percent of Twitter’s traffic is from outside Twitter.com – that is, all those applications I mentioned above are driving the lion’s share of tweets that are broadcast around the world every day. The other big number is that Twitter handles about 19 billion search queries per month either on its own site or via the API – which makes them second only to Google in total search queries per month.

That takes us to the third thing: revenue. Since it broadcast its first tweet in March, 2006 everyone has wondered one thing: how will Twitter make money? Four years later, they’ve got an answer. Promoted Tweets.

According to Twitter COO, Dick Costolo, Promoted Tweets will be a system whereby businesses can bid to promote their own tweets into top-of-stream conversations around particular topics. For instance, say you’re Paramount Pictures and you’re promoting a new movie with opening night parties in cities around the U.S. So you blast out tweets saying “Find an opening night party at a theater near you.” Today, you send that tweet out and it quickly becomes buried under all the tweets that follow it. With Promoted Tweets, each time someone includes your keyword – say, the movie’s title, or the name of its principal star – your tweet will quickly follow-on that tweet to the same group of followers. If Paramount’s tweet gets re-tweeted, clicked-on or favorited, such actions will somehow accrue to the benefit of the advertiser (it isn’t exactly clear how, but I’m guessing its akin to Google’s performance-based quality score for ads in its AdWords system).

“All that exist in our monetization platform are tweets,” Costolo said. “Everything is a tweet. A Promoted Tweet is a tweet. You can do anything to a Promoted Tweet that you can do to a regular tweet.”

Pretty cool. Especially for those of us in the advertising and marketing world looking for ways to appropriately engage in the twitterverse without looking pushy or like we’re trying to interrupt something. Bidding on search keywords became Google’s cash cow; it’s clear Twitter is hoping that bidding on keywords in tweets could become a big cash generator for them.

Speaking of money, the fourth big thing is that Twitter is now developing features and functions within its own sphere that will compete directly with some of the applications built by the very third-party developers Twitter is hosting this week at Chirp. As you might imagine, this is profoundly anxiety-producing for start-ups who’ve built their whole business model around the Twitter API and features that heretofore were absent from the core Twitter offering. So there are more than a few geeks sweating over this. Still, Twitter’s new monetization scheme is something they’re willing to share with Twitter developers who build Promoted Tweets into their applications – in fact, they’ve proposed a generous 50 / 50 split for advertising revenue. So, bad news and good news for developers.

But why, you may ask, should I care about the whole Twitter phenomenon at all? Isn’t it just another fad??

Well, in the same way that blogging seemed to come out of nowhere and then radically altered the ways in which people acquire and consume news, entertainment and information, Twitter is altering the realm of casual conversation. Its created a global water cooler and, from time-to-time, an outlet for breaking citizen-reported news. Remember that immediately following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the first accounts out of the country were via tweets and TwitPics. The same has been true for countless other natural and man-made disasters over the last four years.

Many also believe that Twitter played an outsized role in the extraordinary campaign for the U.S. presidency in 2008. And because Twitter updates now flow seamlessly into Facebook updates, which is also enjoying phenomenal growth among all age segments, more and more people around the world rely on Twitter – whether they know it or not – for their just-in-time / just-enough news, gossip and daily life updates.

Which leads to the last big announcements relating to Twitter this week:

• Google announced that it will make the entire Twitter archive available via its search engine in the coming weeks.
• Microsoft’s Bing announced that it will now elevate relevant tweets in its search results based on real-time trending data.
• Google has also announced that it is incorporating Twitter’s “@anywhere” API, which Twitter announced last month and which makes it easier for third-party websites to incorporate Twitter functionality, into Google’s new service Follow Finder. Just enter your Twitter handle and Follow Finder will recommend other Twitter members who are not yet in your “following” list.
• The U.S. Library of Congress will now officially archive the entire Twitter archive dating back to its opening day in March 2006. Now anything you may have tweeted during that time – and I mean anything – is now resident in the august chambers of our nation’s most prestigious library. Horrifying, no?

Twitter’s impact on the social and cultural landscape worldwide is, presently, incalculable, and its clear the young company isn’t content to rest on its laurels. These changes, together with the exciting new apps still yet to emerge from its ecosystem of developers, portends more exciting announcements to come.

We often get questions from customers about which search engines would be best to run their search ads on. What search engines, they often ask, present the road most likely to get them to advertising success?  While in most instances the answer is “optimize across all three major search engines to get at the best possible results”, for some businesses it may make sense to focus on alternative strategies.  But how?

In order to answer this question, let’s think about what you are looking for in a search engine and what pay-per-click (PPC) advertising objectives you’re trying to reach. The answer usually includes some variation of the following:

You want…

exposure and results – leads, sales, strong word-of-mouth, etc.

at an…

affordable cost-per-click and a profitable return on investment.

I’m sure it’s not breaking news, but this scenario can often be quite a challenge for many businesses — particularly small businesses — to achieve. Most businesses just starting out on PPC advertising try out Google because it’s well-known and because, let’s face it, it generates about 65 percent of the total search traffic on the Web. But there are some alternatives out there that may produce results as good as or better than Google at a lower overall cost per acquisition. Sometimes, in other words, it’s best to consider the road less traveled.  Try thinking about your options like this:

1) The Interstate – Google

What’s possible: huge exposure and profitable campaigns.

What’s required: bigger budgets (i.e., $1,000 per month for less competitive keywords; tens of thousands of dollars or more per month for very competitive keywords) and hard work.

For exposure and volume of visitors, this is the place to be seen. And Google is more than capable of bringing in very good results. However, it is also the winner in the categories of highest cost per click and budget you’ll need for exposure.  Because there is such high traffic and competition on Google, they’ve had to institute some very stringent measures in the form of a quality score system, which can be tough to understand and navigate if you are not an expert.

So, although it’s a big wide road with lots of traffic, Google isn’t a casual Sunday drive. This search engine requires a detailed map with lots of turn-by-turn instructions to actually achieve real results.

2) The Side Road – Bing

What’s possible: decent exposure and profitable campaigns.

What’s required: a medium-size budget (i.e., starting at $750 per month for less competitive keywords in less competitive markets).

Though a side road, Bing is no bumpy byway you use only to avoid heavy traffic – in fact, we’ve found Bing can be a shortcut to great online advertising results. Our recent experience with PPC ad campaign results from Bing is, quite simply, “Wow!” If you haven’t tried it yet, it would be well worth your while to give it a shot.

Bing very often provides a lower cost-per-click than Google, which means a lower budget is required for full exposure. Bing also offers a much easier on-ramp since its quality guidelines are much less opaque than Google’s. With Bing, you can just turn on something basic and get good results without all the hassle of divining what your quality score is and why. We’ve also seen very impressive traffic quality and conversion results from Bing over the last couple months. It looks like Bing is certainly on the rise as a search engine and should not be underestimated.

3) Well Off the Beaten Path – Business.com

What’s possible: modest exposure and profitable campaigns.

What’s required: smaller budgets can suffice (i.e. $250 per month for less competitive keywords).

While everyone has heard of Google and Bing, not everyone has considered Business.com. Many businesses just don’t have the budget to compete for the keywords in their space and markets on Google and Bing. Many of these advertisers, however, have found PPC advertising success with Business.com. It’s the exact same style of advertising as conducted on Google and Bing, but for much lower costs, while still delivering results. So if your budget is too limited for Google and your space is too crowded on Bing, try out Business.com.

4) Off-Road – Facebook

What’s possible: targeted exposure and profitable campaigns.

What’s required: small-to-medium size budgets.

Though not exactly the same sort of PPC advertising as the others, the ad platform on Facebook is similar in many ways to what you will find on Google, Bing and Business.com.  On the Facebook platform, you specify keywords that folks you’re targeting use in their profiles and updates, and you can also specify demographic, psychographic and geographic characteristics to further target your ad.  While mostly text, Facebook ads can also include a single graphical element, which its easy-to-use system helps you to incorporate into your ads step-by-step.

Facebook is vying with Google to be the most-visited website in the world (it may have already surpassed Google, in fact), and it’s a traffic source that should not be overlooked.  Because it’s not exactly the same kind of thoroughfare as the search engines listed above, you do need to spend some time understanding the differences and nuances involved.  But don’t let that deter you from experimenting with this potentially rich source of traffic to your website.

5) Uncharted Territory – Yahoo! Search

What’s possible: good exposure and profitable campaigns.

What’s required: larger budgets.

Later this year, Bing and Yahoo! will integrate search engine operations, and Bing will begin providing results for searches completed on Yahoo!  Currently one of the top three most visited sites in the world, with an enormously popular email system and some of the best-trafficked content portals on the Web (think Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Personals or Yahoo! Autos), Yahoo! Search should not be overlooked.  Still, it’s clear this search engine is in a state of massive transition.  It can be tough to optimize campaigns on Yahoo! and its rules are in many ways quite dissimilar to those in use on Google and Bing, which means you need to bring a whole different intuitive sense to using the system.  And costs-per-click for your keywords are often similar (or identical) to Google’s, though you can get some bargains on Yahoo!  Finally, in our experience traffic and conversions from Yahoo! have fallen behind Bing’s performance of late, so while there are still opportunities on Yahoo!, it’s probably best not to use Yahoo! as a primary search advertising conduit until the Bing-Yahoo! integration is completed late this year and early next year.

Currently, the Yield Web Marketing Suite makes it both easy and profitable to coordinate and optimize your PPC ad campaigns across Google, Yahoo! Search and Bing.  And we’re actively looking at how to expand to include additional PPC ad platforms.  But let’s face it: in most cases, the best road map for acquiring traffic at the lowest possible cost is optimizing your PPC campaigns across the three best-known, most-used engines: Google, Yahoo and Bing.  Our services experts are always available to you to help you to get the most from your pay-per-click advertising campaigns and to provide objective advice about roads less traveled, so never hesitate to ask for help.

It certainly took a little time.  But all the bureaucratic issues have been resolved.  Microsoft and Yahoo! have now received regulatory clearance to form the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance in the United States and European Union.  What this means, essentially, is that Microsoft’s Bing search engine results will combine in some form with Yahoo’s, and the pay-per-click advertising platform for both engines will be powered by Microsoft’s adCenter.

Though Yahoo’s spin on what comes next seems slightly different from Microsoft’s, there is some agreement on the fundamentals.

According to the official Microsoft announcement, after the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is implemented, you will:

Reach more potential customers. Search ad inventory from both the Yahoo! and Microsoft networks will be joined in a new, unified search marketplace powered by Bing, with a combined audience of over 150 million searchers in the U.S and nearly 577 million searchers worldwide.

Save valuable time and effort. You’ll use a single platform — the Microsoft adCenter — to manage your campaigns easier and faster. With just one buy, your search ads will reach users on Bing, Yahoo!, and other premium partner sites and networks, such as The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, msnbc.com, FoxSports.com, Facebook, and Buy.com.

Yahoo, for its part, also seems to have plans to continue to innovate in the field of search independent from Microsoft, and Yahoo’s sales force will also sell specific search services on behalf of the joint effort.  In general, this should be very good for PPC advertisers.  The ROI on Bing campaigns has been, generally speaking, very impressive but they’ve lacked volume since launch.  By combining Yahoo! search volume with Bing’s, advertisers should see hefty benefits.

For all subscribers to the Yield Web Marketing Suite, the transition will be seamless for you and you’ll continue to receive all the benefits of managing your paid search campaigns via our systems.  Our teams are on top of both current and coming changes, and you’ll still be able to manage your PPC, SEO and landing page optimization campaigns for all three search portals from a single, simple interface.

Both Yahoo! and Microsoft have committed to bringing the Search Alliance to the U.S. by the end of 2010, prior to the crucial holiday season, with additional countries following on a staggered schedule beginning in 2011.  Again, for all our subscribers managing campaigns across multiple geographies, this transition will be seamless for you throughout.

As new information becomes available, we’ll be sure to keep you updated here on our Community Blog and via our weekly newsletter.  As always, if you have questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to call our Customer Success Reps Monday – Friday, 9 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. PST at 1-877-943-5379.

In August we ran a post about getting your site listed in Google’s 10-pack.  This post has been our number one read post to date, so I thought you might appreciate additional tips on tweaking your local business center listings across Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

1. Submit complete forms.

All three local search centers include a wealth of information that’s of use for people doing searches (i.e. your prospects!), so be sure to fill out each form completely (the hyperlinked “Google”, “Yahoo” and “Bing”, above, will take you to each).

For example, if you have a bricks and mortar storefront, you can indicate your operating hours. If your site then appears in Google’s 10-pack listing and someone clicks on your listing, it will say whether or not you’re open for business – in real time!

Also be sure to choose the appropriate categories for your business – and yes, you can choose more than one. Choosing more than one category helps ensure you site is shown in local searches for those categories (nevertheless, show restraint: only choose those categories that genuinely refer to your business).

As you can see in the screen shot below, Spa Bar, a day spa in San Francisco, has included its operating hours (and as I write this, the spa is open – hmmmm . . . maybe it’s time for a facial) but is listed for one category only.

Its competitor, Tru Spa, also located in San Francisco, lists its operating hours and six categories, as you can see in the screen shot below.

2. Ask all of your customers to give you a review – on multiple sites.

Customer reviews comprise a major component of the local search algorithm. And, as you can see in the screen shot below, Google is now including a link for “Reputation Trend,” which links to a trending analysis on the review site Judy’s Book.

This means it’s becoming increasingly important that you become very strategic about getting your customers to leave reviews for you – on multiple review sites.

In this shot for Luminous Day Spa, you can see that Bing is pulling information from the CitySearch directory, including “menu” and “reservation” hot links, and it’s showing that the spa has a rating of 9/10 (we’re not sure how that is calculated).

Other review sites you’ll want to consider include:

Local review sites for your city/region – These include CitySearch and Yelp, to name just two popular review sites.

Travel sites — Fodor’s and HotelTravel.com are two popular sites.

Google Reviews – Anyone with a Google account can leave a review simply by clicking on the little “comment” icon that follows any search engine listing (provided the person is logged in to Google).

Yahoo! and Bing Reviews – The review function works similarly to Google’s.

3. Upload your own images.

Although all three search engines let you upload images, you can upload more than just one or two to Google’s local business center. If you don’t upload your own images, you leave to chance exactly what image Google is going to show – which could be unflattering, to say the least.

For our day spa example, many of the spas used photographs of people getting facials and massages or images of their interiors. You can also upload your logo and YouTube videos.

Small plug: If all of this sounds a little overwhelming, consider putting Yield Software to work. With our new Local Listings JumpStart package, we can get you on the map and in your local search results quickly and effectively. To get started, schedule a free 20-minute consult with a Yield Software Services Expert today.