Yield Web Marketing Suite First PPC Optimization Suite to Join AppExchange

I’m very excited to announce today that we’ve completed the integration of our flagship Yield Web Marketing Suite with Salesforce.com.  This was a big effort by the Yield Software team and responds directly to the needs of our customers who use Salesforce.com for their sales and marketing CRM.  The Yield Web Marketing Suite is now available on AppExchange, the cloud computing marketplace at Salesforce.com.

Any marketer currently managing multichannel marketing campaigns using Salesforce.com can now add a complete suite of search marketing capabilities to their mix.  The Yield Web Marketing Suite enables any advertiser or their agency to efficiently launch and manage comprehensive search marketing campaigns, complete with integrated reporting, while reaping the benefits of lower costs of acquisition, improved conversion rates and increased profitability.

Features of the Yield Web Marketing Suite include:

Paid Search Optimizer. Launch, manage and optimize pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaigns across Google, Yahoo! and Bing, based on sophisticated bid management algorithms that work to ensure your campaigns attract the best traffic at the lowest possible cost.

Natural Search Optimizer. Ensure your website pages are optimized for your most important keywords in order to achieve the highest possible natural search rank.  Track inbound links, page rank by keywords and the health of your site at any time interval you choose.

Landing Page Optimizer. Set up multivariate tests of landing pages quickly and easily.  Determine which version of a landing page best converts visitors to improve search marketing campaign performance and profitability.

Salesforce.com Integration. Launch, manage and optimize search marketing campaigns alongside other marketing initiatives in a unified Salesforce.com dashboard.  Improve the performance of pay-per-click campaigns, keywords, ads and landing pages to most effectively drive sales and revenue.

We look forward to serving our customers who are also part of the Salesforce.com ecosystem. As always, if you have any questions or suggestions or issues, please don’t hesitate to contact us at support@yieldsoftware.com or via 1-877-943-5379.

We’ve been busy at Yield Software — this is the second big announcement in as many weeks, and there’s more to come — and today’s announcement is going to make a lot of businesses happy. Today we released the newest version of our flagship offering, which we’re calling Yield Web Marketing Suite Lite. It’s a completely free version focused just on PPC campaign management for smaller budgets.

Advertisers continue to shift from more traditional advertising channels, such as direct mail, spot cable, radio, and print ads, to online marketing channels, especially search engine marketing (SEM). However, many are unsuccessful in their SEM efforts and fail to generate the desired returns from their marketing campaigns.

Search engine marketing is a competitive and dynamic marketplace. Manually managing SEM campaigns requires significant domain knowledge and expertise, including understanding bid and competitive dynamics, keyword selection, geo-targeting, conversion tracking, traffic analytics and many other factors.

The Yield Web Marketing Suite automates SEM campaigns using our proprietary bid optimization algorithm, enabling businesses to better compete in PPC advertising. With the introduction of Yield Web Marketing Suite Lite, it’s now also the only algorithmically-driven bid management solution that optimizes campaigns across all three major search engines simultaneously and is completely free. Advertisers can manage up to $500 per month in PPC advertising at no charge. For those who choose to increase their monthly ad budgets or who wish to also use the other two modules in the Yield Web Marketing Suite (Natural Search Optimizer and Landing Page Optimizer) can simply upgrade to our standard system.  Together with our free SEO Analyzer, companies operating under tight marketing budgets now have two important tools to better their web marketing performance at no cost to them.

Check it out and let us know what you think.

Stop by Our Booth on the Expo Floor!

Yield Software will be presenting and exhibiting at SES-San Francisco 2010 next week at Moscone West.  Our booth number is 416 — Matt, Jenae, Jacob and I will be hanging out there doing demos and schmoozing, and we’d love to say hello if you’re there.

If you’re not already registered for SES, you can still get a free exhibit hall pass — just visit Search Engine Strategies San Francisco to reserve a pass.  We’re also going to be giving away a free Apple iPad (a $499 value) from business cards dropped into the fishbowl at our booth, so be sure to bring yours along and drop it into the bowl.  We’ll do the drawing at the end of the conference and ship the winner’s new iPad directly from Apple.

One more thing to keep in mind: we’ve got a SES promotion you might want to check out.  It’s called our GET SMART promo and here’s how it works:

Sign up for a Yield Web Marketing Suite account for Advertisers or for Agencies before September 15, 2010 and we will include a complimentary “Smart Start” JumpStart worth more than $500.  Your Smart Start will include: Account Set-up; a PPC JumpStart for a single campaign; and 60 days of campaign optimization by one of our PPC experts from our Professional Services team. After 60 days, you’ll be able to take over management of your campaign with ease.

Even if you’re not able to join us at SES next week, do take advantage of the Smart Start JumpStart if you don’t already subscribe to the Yield Web Marketing Suite.  It’s a great way to get off to a solid start managing your SEM campaigns more efficiently, more effectively and more profitably.

SEMPO-San Francisco Bay Area Working Group Party

Join the SEMPO San Francisco Working Group at the post-SES Conference Party on Wednesday, August 18^th.   The hour-long social mixer and networking event will be held in Room 2001 of the Moscone West building in downtown San Francisco, and will begin shortly after the day’s final learning session.  Come join the post-seminar celebration fun and capitalize on an opportunity to meet industry professionals and learn about the latest trends in the world of search.

What’s in it for you?

Complimentary food and drinks (thanks to YouTube and Google)

An opportunity to expand your Search Engine Marketing industry professionals network

An opportunity to learn more about the local SEMPO organization and provide insight for our next event in September covering Trends in Social Media Marketing

For more information, please stop by the SEMPO San Francisco booth in SES-San Francisco Expo Hall on Tuesday August 17^th or Wednesday August 18^th.  Or simply stop by room 2001 at 6:30pm and join the fun and networking!  Also, be sure to join the SEMPO San Francisco conversation and follow us on Facebook and Linked In.

This morning we officially announced the availability of a new call tracking feature in our Yield Web Marketing Suite for Advertisers and for Agencies through an integration with Marchex Call Analytics.  This is a feature many of our users have been eagerly awaiting so we’re pretty excited to announce that it’s live for all users.  For those who don’t know about Marchex, what this means is search marketers and their agencies can now track and optimize sales and conversions from search engine pay-per-click (PPC) ads or natural search results that lead to a telephone call as opposed to an online transaction.

For many of our users, a call to a telephone number is the conversion event inspired by their search engine ad or natural search result.  By integrating with Marchex, the leader in call analytics, search marketing professionals or their agencies managing campaigns in the Yield Web Marketing Suite are now able to effectively track and evaluate the efficacy of their search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns with a call conversion event.  Many of you have told us the reason your company or agency clients love PPC advertising is the ability to effectively track ROI on campaigns, but, of course, those who’ve relied on telephone calls as the conversion event have often been frustrated at the inability to attribute those calls to the advertising source.  The Yield Software–Marchex integration eliminates this ROI tracking gap in SEM.

One of our customers, Michael Cody at Directory Assistants, Inc., was a beta-tester of the new feature and here’s the feedback he gave me:

“As specialists in search and directional marketing for small and mid-size businesses, a disproportionate number of our clients rely on calls as their conversion event for PPC advertising.  Now we’re able to effectively manage PPC campaigns across Google, Yahoo! and Bing search engines on behalf of our clients while accurately attributing each conversion – no matter how those might occur – to the right campaign source.”

We’ve also included built-in reporting tools and analyses in the Yield Web Marketing Suite, so both our advertiser and agency customers now have greater visibility into the impact of your marketing initiatives, which means you can more effectively leverage SEM as a key component of your larger marketing mix.

For current subscribers to the Yield Web Marketing Suite, simply:

Login.

Click on either the Paid Search Optimizer tab.

In the Paid Search Optimizer module, click into an existing campaign or set up a new campaign.

Under “Quick Links” in the right-hand column, click on “Set Up Conversion Events”.

In the Conversion Events page, scroll down to the “Marchex Conversion Events” section and click on “Create a Marchex Conversion Event” link.

Follow the simple instructions; once your conversion event is set up, you’ll be able to track all your call conversion events in the Reports tab, along side all your other conversion event tracking data.

As always, our customer success reps are available to help you out if you questions or require assistance.  Let us know what you think of this new feature–we built it for you and hope you get great results from it.

Let’s face it: it’s typically not recommended! Though it may happen once in awhile, for most people it just doesn’t — usually for good reason.  And yet many businesses treat first visits to their websites as if they’re expecting to go all the way on a first date.

Since we all need that little thing called revenue in order to stay in business and be profitable, many businesses just focus on tracking their one main revenue-generating action as a conversion event for online activity.  Whether it’s a product purchase or generation of a lead, all online campaigns and keywords are judged by their ability to immediately result in this one conversion.

However, in this day and age of information abundance, reviews, referral sources, and the like, many searchers do lots of poking around before they are ready to take that conversion step.  There are four generally-accepted steps in the sales cycle you should keep in mind:

Ignorance — This is the phase when a person is unaware of their need of a particular product or service that might make their lives or their own business somehow better or more efficient or less expensive.

Awareness — When a customer has become aware of a need and the means of addressing it, but is still learning, investigating and preparing.

Engagement — A customer-prospect has selected your company as one that might address their need.

Investment — Success! A prospective customer becomes a paying customer.

Most people these days go through these four stages of the sales cycle.  So rather than throwing all of your eggs in one basket, hoping to convince your visitor to “go all the way” on that very first visit, we encourage you to offer different avenues to make a connection on that first visit.  This will enable you to foster the relationship and be the one the searcher comes back to when they are ready to convert.

For prospects in the “ignorance” phase, it’s important to speak to a particular pain point.  Call out that pain and the clear cure for it.  For instance, say you sell solar panels.  You may want to run PPC ads like this one:

Energy Bills High?

Solar is more affordable

than ever – learn how.

solarxyz.com/lowermybills

(Hopefully, this is a fake company… we intended it to be!)  In this instance, the ad is addressing a common customer pain point: high household energy bills.  They point out why an alternative could be viable for the searcher.  And they entice the searcher with an answer to their pain (”lower my bills”).

Next, during the “awareness” phase, think about why your searcher is likely to be hunting around gathering more information:

Are they looking for the best price?

Do they need reviews / ratings / referrals before selecting?

Are they researching a gift for someone else?

Are they sure about the exact product accessory they need?

Did they simply get interrupted in the middle of their search?

Are they not currently using the right device or computer that they intend on converting from?

Do they need to run it by someone else?

We could go on and on — there are so many different reasons why people aren’t ready to commit on the first click.  After you figure out the likely scenarios for your particular offering, you can start to think about the types of valuable information for a connection that will enable you to stick in the mind of the visitor and leave a lasting presence they will return to.

The content that you offer to make the connection will need to be unique, valuable, helpful and just plain irresistible.  Following are some additional “connection” ideas that you can try out:

Newsletter sign-up.  You’ll need to say more than just “sign up” though – for instance, does the newsletter contain offers?  What type of content is in it that will entice them or be useful to them?

Facebook / Twitter following.  Again –why would they want to do this?  Is there some enticing content from your community that you can use as a teaser?  Are there special offers you have for your social following?

Webinar sign-up.  Do you have any relevant upcoming webinars that might be of interest that you can encourage them to sign up for?

Conference sign-up.  Any upcoming conferences that you will be attending?  Perhaps you are going to have some form of a giveaway that they can sign up for.

Notification sign-up.  Can you entice them to sign-up for an email notification if there is a price changes in the future?  Or would they like to be notified of future reviews that are posted, or stock level notifications?

Third-party data.  Do you have valuable industry or market data that you can share with them – any analyst or third party reports, or review aggregations that would help guide them?

Personalized information.  Can you provide them with any information that is personalized to them?  The ROI on a purchase, help finding the right solution through a series of questions, previewing how something will look for them, analysis of something that is theirs, any form of a calculator, etc.  Make sure to capture the results so you can also email them to them.

Personal response to questions, or personal review of something.  If an expert can help guide them in a personalized, non-salesy way, this is often attractive.

Contests.  Everyone loves to win things!

Polls.  Ask them for their input on something about what you offer.  This will usually require a strong incentive – but even showing the results of an ongoing poll that you have, that they can participate in can often times be enough.

A product brochure, white paper, recent use-case video, etc.  Any content that can help them learn more about you after they go away from your website.

After you are able to make the connection, you’ll want to spend some time nurturing it.  This gets you to the “engagement” level.  Continue to reach out to the visitor on a regular basis with more unique, valuable content along the lines of the connection they made with you.  Whether it’s an updated analysis, a new notification, some interesting community content from Twitter, or some new poll results, keep the conversation going and stay fresh in their mind.

Once you’ve gotten your additional connection points in place on your landing pages and throughout your website, you’ll want to make sure you are tracking their success.  Track all the meaningful events for your online campaigns, realizing that any connection made carries value – so if you have keywords that are bringing in lots of new connections, but no immediate revenue you’ll want to keep them alive to see if your nurture-rate to revenue is high.  For each of these connection points, you’ll want to monitor how often they bring about return visits and eventually generate revenue.  This will help you know where to focus your efforts as you go forward.

All of which gets you to that “all-the-way goal”: investment.

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.

A big blocker to an integrated search engine marketing approach is simply lack of knowledge about the different areas.  Commonly, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising guys don’t really “get” search engine optimization (SEO), while SEO guys are kind of put off by PPC campaign work.  But rich rewards await those who stretch beyond their comfort zones and embrace something new or unknown within the realm of search marketing.

What follows are some tips to help you take the information and knowledge you may currently have and start to expand your search engine marketing efforts in an integrated fashion.

PPC for the SEO Guy

If you are used to SEO and are starting PPC, be prepared for a fast pace game, and get ready to spend money on those clicks.

• Use what you already know – start off with your SEO data

1. Actual search queries.  Look at your keywords list in your analytics system.  Use the keywords that are relevant as your target keywords and use any terms that are irrelevant as negative keywords.
2. Look at the geographical source of your visitors and compare the bounce rate, average time on site and conversion rate.  Target the most effective regions for your PPC campaign geo-targets.

• Here’s your PPC blueprint:

1. Organize your keyword list into very tiny ad groups.  The keywords within the ad group should be almost identical with only plural or other very minor variations.  For example, the following keyword list:

Blue shiny widget

Blue shiny widgets

Pink widget

Blue widget supplier

Would be organized into ad groups as follows:

Blue shiny widget ad group with keywords: blue shiny widget, blue shiny widgets

Pink widget ad group with keywords: pink widget, pink widgets

Blue Widget Supplier ad group with keywords: blue widget supplier, blue widget suppliers, blue widgets supplier and blue widgets suppliers

2.  Write ad copy for each of the ad groups that includes the keywords (multiple times), your unique value and a call to action.

Always try more than 1 ad in each ad group:

Blue Shiny Widget Ad Group:

Blue Shiny Widgets

50% Off Blue Shiny Widgets.

Buy Today for Free Shipping!

www.DomainName.com/BlueShinyWidgets

Blue Shiny Widgets

Blue Shiny Widgets – 50% Off!

Order Now for Free Shipping.

BlueShinyWidgest.DomainName.com

3.  The destination page on your website for ads in this ad group, should take the visitor directly to the blue shiny widgets page.

SEO for the PPC Guy

If you are expanding from PPC into SEO, you’ll need to develop some patience.  Changes can take a very long time to happen, but once day do you’ll love the free clicks!

Here are some baby steps to get you on your way:

Use what you already know.  Keywords are also the name of the game here.

Put your keywords to work.  Keywords with high impressions and strong conversions.  This will be your target keyword list for SEO.  Make sure to target the most relevant keywords for each individual page of your website.  If you have a high volume of candidate keywords, start off with those with the least amount of natural search competition first.

Use geographic information.  Review your geographical performance of your visitors to see if you should be targeting any geographic names along with your keywords.

Page optimization.  Make on-page optimizations to ensure your page is relevant to your target keywords.  For example your Page Title should include your most important keywords.  Use your best-performing ads and landing page copy for hints about what effective SEO copy will be.

Page configuration.  Make sure your web page is properly configured and in good overall shape – for example, fix broken links, trim down excessive outbound links, and make sure your page loads fast – ideally in around 2 seconds.

Page content.  Now for the big one – create truly valuable and unique content on your page that emphasizes your keywords.  This one can take some time so leverage any resources you can,

Links.  Set up the internal linking structure throughout your site to point to your content using variations of your target keywords.

Promotion.  Now go market your page’s content to build links.

Your content placement report from PPC can include some clues for good link sites.  Look for other high authority sites in your space – industry organizations, partner sites, etc. that also rank well for your top terms.

Fantasy sports continue to attract more interest each year. The concept of assembling a dream team of elite players, watching them outperform and raking in the profits is very appealing and addictive to many.

Since there are never enough sport analogies in the business world, let’s apply these fantasy team concepts to SEM. If you were to assemble your own SEM fantasy team, what would it look like?

The Fantasy SEM Team Roster. You can’t play any sport without a full team. What does a full team for SEM include? You need team members to both attract visitors to your website and then convert them once they get to your site.

Here’s what your starting lineup should include:

The Offense: Get them to your site.

Paid Search Keywords. Star keywords are short tail enough to get great volume and make a competitive stand, but yet specific enough to get you real results. You’ll need to think in terms of the search refinement path and the buying cycle so that you have all the necessary assist impressions and clicks as well as those that actually convert. The dream team keywords often come with a steeper price tag, but frequently contribute far superior rewards.

Paid Search Ad Copy Unique Offer Descriptors. These are the snippets in your ad that make your ad stand out from the competition. These grab searchers and say “hey- look at me and this amazing thing I have.” You’ll need a couple of different ones so you aren’t always showing the same line to searchers as they head down the search path.

Paid Search Ad Copy Calls to Action. These ad copy snippets motivate searchers to click and act. Create a sense of urgency and be specific about what they can expect and what you want them to do.

SEO Keywords. These are the keyword searches that would enable you to crush your competition on the natural search side. It’s important for these keywords to have great chemistry with the paid search keywords. When you’ve got a presence in both the paid and natural results on a page, your click-through rate will skyrocket.

SEO Link Bait. Your link bait can come in many different forms – original and valuable content is key here. It’s especially important for your link bait to play well with your SEO keywords, to give your rank the boost it needs.

The Defense: Stop visitors from leaving your site before converting.

Website Smack Talkers. No fantasy team would be complete without some smack. Highlight your benefits over the competition on your web pages. Make it as easy as possible for searchers to understand how you line up and what you have to offer that’s unique and better.

Website Credibility Givers. Showing awards and including reviews are good ways to make yourself shine and provide credibility.
Website Calls to Action. Without a score, even if you play great, it just doesn’t pay off. This is one of the spots where you can even use a player to play both offense and defense. If you have a call to action that’s working in your paid search ads or website, don’t be afraid to use the same one in both locations.

Remarekting ads. Rebounding is always important. If someone gets away from your site without converting, get back out there and try to lure them back in. Don’t give up because you didn’t make a score on your first try.

Fantasy SEM Tips for Success:

Here are a few tips for assembling and managing a winning Fantasy SEM Team:

Create Team Chemistry. Not only do they have to be great stars themselves, but it’s important that the members of your team have good chemistry between them and be on the same page. Consistent keywords, while providing broad coverage and consistent messaging without being repetitive to death are important. Your team members should create a cohesive tightly woven message.

Foster Team Competition. Even star performers can get a bit lazy if there isn’t some competition continually pushing them to do their best. Always have a set of backup players practicing every day and giving your stars a run for their money.

Reward Consistent Performance. Nothing is more frustrating than a great click here and there, but otherwise dismal performance. This is your dream team, not the minor leagues, if a piece of your team can’t perform consistently it should take the bench.

Keep Scouting. Don’t miss out on a hot new keyword, rising pain point or new critical feature. You need to continually keep tabs on the market place to make sure you spot and incorporate sleepers into your team to stay on top.

Monitor Competition. Keep an eye on all of your competitor’s moves. Do they have new messaging? Are they showing up for new keywords? Have they retired anything that wasn’t working? Are they copying any of your techniques? Always stay a step ahead and stay unique. Never be caught off guard.

Be Prepared for Challenges. As with any stars, your fantasy SEM team will likely have high drama associated with them. They will be in high demand, people will try to steal them from you, copy their techniques, etc. They also don’t come with ease, don’t come for free and don’t stay unless they are continually nurtured.

Become Addicted to Stats. As with any fantasy league, watching your star performers work in action is half the fun. Luckily reporting is easily available for much of SEM, so you can kick back on the couch, crack open a cold one and watch you fantasy SEM team work wonders – getting clicks, having visitors spend quality time on your site and bringing in “the Quan.”

Don’t Let Gut & Emotions Rule. There are going to be some offers and some keywords that in your gut you really want to be star performers, but when you look at the data, they just won’t be. Don’t let your emotions take over and put your non-performers on the bench.

Keep Your Eye on the Prize. It’s not free to play and the stakes are high, so you better stay focused on winning. Keep focused on how you are performing against your goals and in comparison to your competition. You might decide that second or third prize has enough cash for you, but you’ll need to monitor where you are in line, not that one of your competitors goes out and adds in some new messaging or keywords that crushes you.

Keep a Consistent Strategy. There is a lot of hype around SEM and people with new strategies and schemes every day. It’s important to tune out the noise and stick with your strategy until you are sure (based on the facts) that it needs tweaking.

Staying focused on an elite fantasy SEM team, can be a great strategy for achieving these 3 main SEM goals:

1. Make a name for yourself
2. Crush your competition
3. Make money

And there’s nothing wrong with those outcomes, right?  So assemble your team and take your league by storm today!

The search marketing world creates interesting situations where ethical lines can get stretched quite a bit. For instance, in the search marketing world information is public. Yet unscrupulous actions can be taken anonymously — a scenario too tempting for many a desperate competitor. We run into many clients who have been unethically pursued by a competitor. Unfortunately, there are no comprehensive policing capabilities out there, and complaints about suspected competition fraud are frequently ignored.  Still there are things you can do to protect yourself and you should never stoop to the level of an unethical competitor to retaliate — in the long run, there are always consequences for unethical behavior.

First, let’s look at some all-too-common non-ethical examples. These just don’t pass the red-face test:

Competitors clicking on your pay-per-click ads.

First, it must be stated that most often we find that this one is mostly paranoia. And it can be tough to prove.  However, if you are sure this is happening to you, there are some proactive measures you can take. For example, you can exclude specific geographies or even IP addresses from your pay-per-click campaign to prevent competitor from viewing your ads. Just be careful not to lose out on new leads due to worries about competitors.

Competitors writing false negative reviews.

This one is always heart-breaking for us to hear, but desperate competitors have been known to do this quite aggressively. What can you do? Comment back. Try to address the issues as if they are real to see if they stop. If not, try reaching out to the site where they are being posted. Some sites will work with you on removing false reviews. Also, try to get your customer base incentivized to post positive reviews about you, so that good and real customer feedback is much more prominent than your unethical competitor’s words.  Customer loyalty will always overwhelm unethical competitive behavior.

Competitors using your trademark in their ad copy.

You don’t want your competitor using your product or company name in their ads – particularly in a negative context. This one requires you to protect your trademarks. Monitor for improper or illegal usage of your trademarks and file complaints of any violations the search engines. Ads that infringe on your trademarks will be disallowed from appearing by the search engines.

Next, let’s look at some examples of ethical competitive maneuvering, but which can also be abused:

Tools focused on “spying” on your competitors.

The word “spying” makes you think you might be doing something unethical. However, most of these tools focus on providing information that is publicly available, but also often difficult to aggregate for an individual.  One other aspect to consider here is how the spy-tool company is gathering data – so make sure this is an approved method for data collection. For the most part, this is an okay strategy for supplementing your online competitive knowledge; however, much of the data should be taken with a grain of salt. We haven’t yet come across a tool that has spot-on accurate data, or data that isn’t very stale. Still, many can tools can provide general information that can help you develop robust sets of competitive keywords.

Attending competitor’s webinars, downloading white papers, taking free trials, and subscribing to feeds.

These are examples of information companies make available to the public — including their competitors. However, if you are attending an online event or downloading information using a false name or false credentials, then this crosses the ethical line. However, if you access this information, and are honest about who you are, there isn’t any problem with taking advantage of information being supplied by your competitors.  In fact, in this world of blogs and data sharing and Twitter streams, there are plenty of ethical ways you should be maintaining knowledge of your competitors — believe me: they’re staying abreast of all your activity.

Advertise on your competitor’s brand name.

Add in your competitor’s brand name and products names as keywords in your Google PPC campaigns, and have your ads show for those. This helps to make sure that potential customers give you a peak as they consider your competitor.  Just be sure NOT to use your competitor’s brands in your own ad copy — that would be unethical.

Review your competitor’s ad copy.

Check out your competitor’s ad copy. This is a great way to stay on top of their offerings and what they think their competitive advantages are. Keep up here to make sure that your offer is unique and your offers are truly competitive.  However, never copy a competitor’s ads verbatim.  Focus on your own unique points of differentiation in ad copy that’s all your own.

Review your competitor’s website (including view source).

Keep tabs on your competitor’s websites. Extensive reviews here can provide you with a wealth of information about their offerings, their clients, their management, their value proposition, etc.  If you want to know what keywords they are targeting to rank highest for on natural search, click to “view source” of their webpage. Many people have their keywords listed right in their meta keywords tag. But if the keywords aren’t there, check out frequently used words in their page title tags, H1 tags, meta descriptions and content to get a feel for where they are focusing. You might choose to go head-to-head with them, or you might choose to branch out into different words to capture searches they are missing out on.

Read your competitor’s reviews.

What are people saying about your competitors? What do they like? What don’t they like? Make sure to keep tabs on feedback trends so you can improve your own standards in areas where you don’t think you align.  For instance, if your competitor is consistently praised in reviews for excellent customer service, and you’re not, well… you know what you need to do!

It’s okay to be a fierce competitor and to maintain tabs on what your key competition is doing.  Refrain from crossing ethical lines, and you’ll always be engaged in a good, clean fight.  And when you encounter a competitor whose ethics cross the line, use established channels to put a halt to it.

We are excited to announce that we just launched our patent-pending Negative Keyword Recommendation Engine as part of both the Yield Web Marketing Suite and Yield Web Marketing Suite for Agencies. This new feature is now available to all new and existing customers.

The Negative Keyword Recommendation Engine analyzes volumes of your historical traffic segmented by keyword, ad group and campaign. It then aggregates data based on common terms and uses sophisticated algorithms based on a variety of criteria including search volume, bounce rate and conversion rate to automatically recommend negative keywords for addition to each of your campaigns and ad groups.

While there are many facets of a search marketing campaign that are critical for success, many search engine marketers forget to pay enough attention to one of the most important aspects of their campaign. You launch your campaign by setting up keywords, groups and ad copy. However, you’ll inevitably discover that you want to spend your marketing budget even more effectively.

This is where “negative keywords” come into play. In short, negative keywords (also called “excluded keywords”) prevent your ads from showing when the search query includes one or more keywords that you have specified you want to exclude. For example, if you are a realtor and have a phrase match for “real estate agent”, you may attract searches looking for “real estate agent classes”. By adding “classes” as a negative keyword, you will ensure your ads are not shown for people looking for classes on becoming a real estate agent. By narrowing your focus of your advertisements, you will ensure that you wouldn’t be paying for clicks from people not interested in your offering. In addition, you will improve your quality score and, as a result, lower your cost per click by improving the relevancy of your ads.

You may ask, “Why wouldn’t I want to pay for any click I can get? After all, if the user wasn’t interested in what I was advertising, they wouldn’t click on it!” The answer is that people may click on your ad for a variety of reasons. They may not read your ad correctly, read it in the wrong context, or not even read it at all before clicking on it. Typically, they will realize they are in the wrong destination and immediately leave — which is called a bounce. In other words, you paid for the click and they weren’t remotely interested in what you were offering.

You can access negative keyword recommendations by navigating to your paid search campaign and clicking “Manage Negative Keywords” or clicking on any ad group to see the group detail. The pages displayed will show both your currently selected negative keywords and any negative keyword recommendations (note: we will only recommend negative keywords when you have enough traffic for us to make relevant recommendations).

By using the Yield Software Negative Keyword Recommendation Engine, you can be sure you are continuously tuning your campaign to eliminate targeting irrelevant traffic, improve the effectiveness of your search marketing budget and increase the ROI of your campaigns. (Who knew being so negative could produce such positive results?)