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.

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.

Whether you run pay-per-click (PPC) ads on Google only or across the three major U.S. search engines (including Yahoo! Search and Microsoft’s Bing until the two merge their platforms), setting up a pay-per-click campaign is fairly straight-forward. That is, until you have the campaign up and running and realize you’re shelling out a ton of money for little or no return.

Because we work so often with small and mid-sized businesses just beginning to dip their toes into the PPC waters, we’re introducing a new series — the “It’s New to You” Series — and we’ll be covering how to set up a campaign for the first time, including methods for getting started, making keyword lists, developing your first ads, setting up groups, and how to focus on keywords in each group.

There are a number of good books you can read, too.  For instance, if you want really detailed PPC strategies specific to Google (which is where most businesses begin their PPC campaigns), I recommend you read Andrew Goodman’s classic book Winning Results with Google Adwords, 2nd edition, which Andrew updated in 2008. And we’ll be introducing our own new e-Book, The Link Economy and Why It Matters to Small and Medium Businesses, at next week’s Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo in San Jose, which you’ll be able to download for free right here from our Community page (be sure to check back on August 11th to download your free copy.)

Today: we begin with a few key steps to getting yourself oriented and set up.

Step #1: Create accounts with the various search engines.

To save you some time, follow these links to the three search engines and their sponsored search programs. Do note that Microsoft charges a non-refundable $5 fee when you create an account for its Bing search engine. Google and Yahoo! do not charge to set up an account.

Google AdWords

Yahoo! Sponsored Search (for small business)

Microsoft adCenter

Step #2: Spend some time in the learning centers.

Each PPC platform works a little differently, so it pays to spend some time viewing each platform’s learning demos and other information. Both Google and Microsoft have “open to the public” learning centers that are quite robust with multimedia training, quizzes, etc.

Some things you’ll want to carefully review include:

Billing – Set this up with care as you can’t change your billing preferences with regard to currencies once you set up your account.

Daily Budget Setting – All three PPC platforms allow you to set a daily budget – i.e., once you hit your (say) $10 a day maximum, your ads no longer appear on results pages until the next day.

Search Network – It’s also important to understand where your ads will appear. In addition to the sponsored listings on the search engine results pages (SERPs), your ads can appear across multiple sites within each search engine’s network of search partners; for instance, in the case of Google, AOL, Myspace and Ask.com SERPs are included in their network. Ads also appear within each company’s free email platforms, including Google’s Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Microsoft’s Hotmail, as well as the various properties within each search engine (i.e., Yahoo!, MSN or Google News).

Content Network – Again, your ads will appear across potentially dozens of media and other content sites such as the The New York Times, CNET, Fortune, blogs, and second- and third-tier websites. (Website owners and bloggers can subscribe to Google’s AdSense program, which serves ads on their sites and generates a share of revenue to the site owner.)

Step #3: Target your customers.

This is the step most new search marketers forget – that is, figuring out the type of customer they want to target. If you’re like most small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), you have three or more types of customers you currently do business with – and perhaps a couple more you’ll want to attract in the future.

For example, if you manufacture pet care products, you may sell directly to consumers as well as to pet stores (and their distributors) across the US or a specific region. And, because you sell high-end (re: relatively expensive) products, you’ll want to target those pet owners who don’t mind spending money on Fluffy or Spot.

Hence, not only are you targeting consumers with a specific household income level, you’re also targeting boutique pet stores (both bricks-and-mortar shops and the online versions) as well as national chains. The campaigns you eventually develop will be different for each distinctive group.

So, before you begin writing those ads, write down the types of customers you’re targeting and any demographics you know about them (where they live, income, job titles, publications they read, etc.)

Okay, that’s enough information to keep you busy until the next post, where I’ll cover setting up ad groups.

Small plug: Yield Software actively manages PPC campaigns for you across all three major search engines through our fully automated system powered by advanced algorithms. For people new to pay-per-click advertising, 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, our Yield Web Marketing Suite makes it easy to get started.

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

Anti-Spyware & Anti-Virus Programs “Rate” Your Links

More and more people are using a couple of anti-spyware / anti-virus programs that alert Web searchers whenever a search result link is considered “unsafe.”

By “unsafe” I mean that the link goes to a landing page or website where nefarious activities take place: the searcher’s machine is infected with a virus, Trojan, worm, malware, etc. These programs also alert searchers whenever a website is invading their privacy, the site’s shopping cart is “unreliable” or the company inundates them with spam.

One such program is AVG, the free anti-virus, anti-spyware program. It places a little red, yellow, or green icon next to each search result in order to alert the searcher if it’s safe to click on the link. And, users of Mozilla’s Firefox browser can also add a plug-in called Web of Trust (WOT) that also shows which links are safe or unsafe via little green, yellow, and red circles.

“Yes, yes, yes,” I can hear you thinking, “but I don’t need to worry about this – I’m not peddling viruses. I’m selling legitimate products and services!”

Ah, but these virus alert systems are something you should know about because as you can see in the Google screen shot below for the search phrase “email marketing program,” five of the Sponsored Listings have either a yellow (warning) or red (stay away!) circle – and these are for businesses offering legitimate products and services.

It gets even worse: click on the Sponsored Listing for StrongMail and you get a WARNING Screen that tells you the site has a “poor reputation.”

Now, I know for a fact StrongMail is a reputable company providing a valued service to a large and growing customer base. But, once a searcher gets this screen, he or she will very likely click back to the SERP (if he or she even clicked through to your page after seeing the red circle on the SERP). Basically, you can say “bye-bye” to potential customers should your PPC links appear with red circles. (StrongMail: if you’re reading this, take note!)

The same “rating” circles are seen in these Yahoo and Bing screenshots, although both search engines have not incorporated WOT in their Sponsored Listings, only the organic listings – with four of the top five Yahoo organic listings showing red circles.

In addition, WOT alerts its users to safe and unsafe links within Web-based email (i.e. Gmail) as well as the associated Sponsored Links — as seen in this screen shot:

WOT has been downloaded by over 4 million users worldwide (according to the WOT website) and an active community of users continually ranks sites for safety and other issues. The plug-in has received rave reviews from many PC magazines and columnists, and online child-safety advocates.

So what’s a PPC marketer like you to do if your links appear with the dreaded red circle and your website and products/services are clean and legit?

According to the WOT Website, you can take steps to change your ranking (provided you’re the owner of the site or an employee of the company). Steps include:

First: Write your own comment on the WOT scorecard for your site and explain you are the owner of the site and/or company and why your service is good.

Second: Contact the users who ranked your site through their WOT boards and ask why they took issue with your site.

Third: Ask your customers to favorably rate your site through WOT.

Fourth: Rank your site yourself.

According to many search experts, online reviews of sites will become more important to the various search engines and their algorithms – and WOT is, in effect, a review of your site and/or landing page.

You expend a lot of time and money to ensure your PPC campaigns are producing results. Don’t let negative reviews unknowingly detract your click-through traffic. Using plug-ins like WOT and AVG, research how your links appear to searchers – and take fast action when you see something amiss.

The Yield Web Marketing Suite includes a powerful, yet easy-to-use PPC module, and our campaign performance reports can also alert you if traffic suddenly slides for a specific ad campaign due to issues such as a “negative” ranking (WOT or otherwise). See for yourself by trying our free, no risk, no obligation 30-day trial.

In my last blog post, I discussed how to develop the right list of keywords – that is, keywords that people are actually using in their searches. Once you have your keywords in hand, you’re ready to incorporate them into your Title and meta tags. A significant part of your website is each page’s HTML source code, which includes these tags and which give the search engines information about your site.

From a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective, the Title tag is most critical because it’s where you add your important keywords that describe what your Web page is about. (Some people call this tag the Page Title Tag for this reason.)

You see a Web page’s Title tag every time you open your browser as the Title tag is located at the top of browser window. For example, in the screen shot below, you can see that the Title tag for our Home page is “Powerful, Automated Search Engine Marketing | Yield Software.”

The Title tag is also what appears in the search engine results pages as the clickable link for each listing on the page.

Web searchers like you and me use these links – and the keywords in them! – to help us find what we’re looking for. Google, Microsoft’s Bing, Yahoo! Search and other search engines use the keywords in your Title tag (and in your page copy, which we’ll talk about next blog post) to help it determine what your page is about and index it accordingly.

This is why it’s critically important that you use the right keywords in your Title tags. You want your site to show up in the search results and you want people to click on your link. And, as you can see in this example, Google bolds the keywords from the search phrase.

The meta description tag also plays a key role with regard to SEO, except that unlike the Title tag, the major search engines don’t give it any weight in their algorithms. Google often displays the contents of the description tag as the “snippet of info” beneath the Title tag. In the screen shot above, Google pulled part of the snippet from our description tag and part from our home page copy.

Although there’s no guarantee that Google or others will use your description tag as the snippet, it’s still a good idea to develop compelling description tags that prompts people to click on your link when confronted with nine other links on the search engine results pages.

When developing your Title and description tags, keep in mind the following dos and don’ts:

Do focus on two to three keywords per page – People mistakenly believe that they can add a half dozen keywords to a Title tag. SEO best practices dictate, however, that you focus on only two to three keywords per page.

Do Develop unique tags for each page – Every page on your site, and especially your products and services pages, should have a unique Title and description tag.

Do “match” your Title and description tags – The keywords you use in the Title tag should also appear in description tag. This helps your listing stand out more as people see the bolded words in the link and the snippet – a visual double whammy.

Do limit Title tags to approximately 70 characters – Google cuts off longer Title tags, so keep your Title tags brief. The character count includes all characters, such as dashes, and spaces.

Do limit description tags to approximately 150 characters – The same holds true for this tag as well.

Don’t put your company name first – Google gives more weight to the keywords at the beginning of the Title tag, so add your company name at the end of the Title tag.

Don’t ignore word order – If one of your best keywords is “romantic hotels in san Francisco,” your Title and description tag should include this exact keyword phrase.

Don’t “set and forget” – Monitor your search engine rankings and conversions. Which keywords drive the best traffic that converts into sales? Which keywords aren’t working? Constantly monitor what’s working and make changes as necessary.

You can reduce the amount of time you spend tediously monitoring and tweaking your keywords by using Yield Software’s fully integrated suite of automated Web marketing capabilities. The system checks your website regularly against our library of SEO best practice to ensure your Title and meta tags are up to snuff, among many, many other variables. When the system identifies problems, it offers a clear explanation of the problem; a solution for fixing it; and even offers auto-fixes for many common issues that crop up.

See how easy it is to automate your SEO by signing up for our free 30-day trial offer.

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.