AuthorHouse Blog

I remember trying to purchase my name, www.TomBritt.com, back in 1996 and finding out that someone else had already bought it. I thought to myself, “who on earth would want this?” Obviously, another Tom Britt in Massachusetts wanted it and reserved it just days before I thought to snap it up.

I came across the list of the oldest domain names, dating back to March 1985. The oldest 100 .com domains are listed, most of which are technology companies that were leading the way with the development of the Internet itself.

So who is the oldest? You’ll never guess…check out the list!

At long last, Yahoo! Search Marketing finally eliminated their $30/month minimum monthly spend requirement. This has been my biggest beef with Yahoo! Search Marketing from day one. While their traffic is more targeted and usually converts at a much higher rate than Google AdWords, it is difficult for start-up campaigns to spend $30 a month thanks to Yahoo’s stringent editorial review process. If they could only speed this process up, we’d all be happy with Yahoo! Search Marketing. But then again, if it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

Personalized Search is an improvement to Google search that orders your search results based on what’s most relevant to you. The Search History feature of Personalized Search lets you view and manage your history of searches and search results you’ve clicked on; this information then personalizes your future search results by bringing results closer to the top when it’s clear they’re most relevant to you. Early on, you may not notice a huge impact on your search results, but as you build up your search history, your personalized search results will continue to improve.

Ever wonder what the most popular search terms on Google are each week? This link provides insights into the search queries that the millions of Google users are pinging the world largest search engine for each week. Categories are broken down by celebrities, music, references (dictionary, thesaurus, etc.), and travel. What’s interesting to watch is how these queries change from week to week. You can also go back in time into the archives and see what the most popular searches were up to four years ago.

If you are wondering what the search engines see when they are spidering your website, go to this link and input your website URL and find out. I would recommend clicking “yes” to the “Use our default stop word list” option, it gives you a more realistic view of what the search engine crawlers index. Words like the, an, a, of, by, for, and other common words are usually not indexed to give more relevance to your key words and phrases.

Remember, search engines can’t view photos or graphics, so even though your logo is beautiful and in full color, the search engine only reads the actual text and code.

I came across an interesting article in Publishers Weekly this month entitled “Publishers Take the Direct Route: Random, S&S the latest to go D2C“. It seems that the traditional publishers are piloting programs to sell direct to the consumer (D2C) through their own websites. Harlequin has aggressively gone after online book sales through their eHarlequin.com website which offers a 20% discount and free shipping. According to the article, Katherine Orr, the Harlequin spokesperson claims that sales through eHarlequin.com does not take away business from retailers.

This change in paradym should reinforce in all our minds that the Internet is definately the book sales channel of the future. Traditional publishers are no longer beholden to bookstores. Likewise, self-published authors are not reliant upon bookshelf space to sell books. The online shopping experience is becoming the most popular, and certainly fastest growing book sales channel in the market.

We all have Amazon.com to thank for this.

Depending on what product you are selling and your online objectives, posting an online auction on eBay can create a lot of traffic, buzz, and even revenue for your business.

A few years ago, my good friend was trying to sell his house and having trouble. The problem was his house was appraised over $1,000,000 on Geist Reservoir in central Indiana, a high price tag for homes in Indiana. I took some photos and posted his house for sale on eBay on a 30-day auction. We didn’t sell his house, but we generated a lot of interest online and had several showings as a result. Inexpensive advertising with global reach!

Ebay has over 20 million visitors a day, all shopping for various items. Just like the major search engines like Google and Yahoo, eBay users are searching for items based on keywords, location, price, or even by the time left in the auction.

Here are a few examples of when to use an online eBay auction:

• Event Marketing: Have a big event coming up? Schedule a 10-day auction and sell a unique item specific to your event (e.g. autographed basketball for charity walk)
• Used Merchandise: Have a lot of returns? Don’t sell them in your store and undercut your new prices…sell them on eBay!
• Block of Your Time: If your company provides consulting, business planning, or other time-based project billings, auction off a block of your time and gain a new client in the process.

Keep in mind, your auctions’ headline, subheadline, and text copy are all searchable by eBay’s search technology. Make sure your listings are “searchable” and placed in the appropriate category(ies).

If you have questions about how your company could benefit from eBay auctions, contact me.

According to Nielsen/NetRatings and Search Engine Watch, Google has been able to maintain their dominance in the search engine world with a 46.2% marketshare. Since January 2005, Google’s dominance has slid a bit (1.1% overall) while Yahoo! has gained 1.3% over the same time period. It will be interesting to see how this dynamic changes when MSN launches their PPC program next year.

I wanted to pass along a good pay per click engine recommendation, adknowledge.com. We implemented their network into one of my larger client’s PPC portfolio and it quickly accounted for 13% of their total leads in only one month. The jury is still out on how these leads convert compared to other PPC leads, but early indicators are showing that they are just as strong as other search engines.

I talk to a lot of small businesses that are wanting to get involved in pay per click but don’t know where to start. If you have never done pay per click before and want to crawl before you walk, here is my advice:

1. Start with Google AdWords: it is the easiest to set up, gives you more search exposure than Yahoo!, and does not charge a minimum.
2. Do your keyword research: don’t just bid on the obvious terms that your company’s website should be found under, but look for what I call “user habit” words. Ask yourself, “If someone didn’t know what my business does, what would they be looking for that would be close to what I do?”
3. Bid on mispellings: Many searchers fall victim to “fat finger syndrome”, mispelling even the most obvious words (like your business’s name). Bid on the mispelling combinations of your business’s keyword and phrases, you’ll be the only relevant listing to come up in the results pages!
4. Manage your budget: Google and Yahoo! Search Marketing all allow you to set your budget, but set realistic goals. Don’t bid on $2.00 per click terms and set a $5.00 per day budget, you’ll hit your ceiling early in the day and your ads won’t appear anymore all day.
5. Go cheap: Find terms that have little competition but are specific to what you do. Don’t bid on terms like “insurance” (cost per click around $5.00), but bid on “Indianapolis insurance rates” (only $.10 per click). Misspellings and niche terms also fall into this category of cheap clicks.
6. Volume of terms over value: Don’t bid on just a hand full of terms, bid on at least 50-100 terms that you can think of. Expanding your keyword list is an ongoing process. Casting the widest search net you can is the key to getting the best (not necessarily most) traffic you can.

How much should you spend? I wouldn’t do any pay per click unless you are willing and able to spend at least $100 a month. Setting your budget in Google to $150-$200 should allow you to spend $100. Surprisingly, if you put a daily budget of $3.33 (30 days x $3.33 = $100), you probably won’t spend over $20 a month. Daily traffic fluctuates drastically and you’ll find that certain days of the week provide better and more traffic than others.

Play it safe as you start on your pay per click endeavors. Read the tutorials available on both Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing before you spend one nickel on clicks.