The first SEO Class was very successful. The feedback was excellent, and we’re happy with how the day went. We’ve officially partnered with Webmaster World for the next show which is coming back to New York on July 30th-31st.

The speakers are:

• Michael Grey
• Todd Mailcoat
• Greg Niland
• and myself

Feel free to visit the SEO Class website, view the agenda, or better yet, register.

There’s also a discussion on Webmaster World about the next class.

Hope to see you there.

SMX was a very enjoyable conference. It was a nice mixture of being as laid back as Pubcon, yet had more corporate attendees similar to SES. One day I’ll do a full write up about the conference, but for now, it’s presentation time.

I spoke on the ‘Pump Up Your Paid Search’ panel. which was billed as: Tips and techniques designed to help pros get even more out of their paid search campaigns. Ben Perry from iProspect spoke about general tips to improve campaign performance. Matt Wagner from Find Me Faster did a fantastic (and funny) presentation on Dynamic Keyword Insertion.

Myself? I spoke about day parting (in the Google world it’s called Ad Scheduling). Day Parting is the changing of bids, or pausing of keywords, based upon time of day or day of the week.

Below is the presentation. If your browser doesn’t support mht files and iFrames, the PDF download link is below the presentation.

Enjoy.

Download the PDF: Pump Up Your Paid Search: Day Parting.

When:
Toronto -Thursday, June 28th, 2007

Hilton Toronto
145 Richmond Street West
Toronto, Canada M5H 2L2
Phone 416.869.3456
Driving Directions

Times:
Registration: 7:30 - 8:00 AM
Morning Session: 8:00 - 12:00 PM
Lunch Break: 12:00 - 1:00 PM
Afternoon Session: 1:00 - 5:00 PM

Breakfast and Refreshments Served

Agenda:

Morning:

• The Search Process
• Best Practices
• Keywords
  • Generating Keywords
  • Creating Keyword Lists
  • Match Type
• Negative Keywords
• AdWords Keyword Tool
• Effective Search Ads
• Landing Pages
• Optimizing AdWords Accounts
  • Optimizing For Traffic
  • Optimizing For Conversions
  • Optimizing For Quality Score
  • Optimizing For the Content Network
• Conversion Tracking
• AdWords Tools
  • Traffic Estimator
  • Copy/Move Keywords/Ad Text
  • Advanced Search and Editing
  • Ad Diagnostic Tool
  • Disapproved Ads Tool
  • Change History
• Reporting Options

Afternoon:

• Advanced Ad Types
  • Local Business Ads
  • Image Ads
  • Video Ads
  • Mobile Ads
• IP Targeting & Geo Keywords
  • Local Targeting Options
• Advanced Ad Display
  • Ad Scheduling
  • Position Preference
  • Ad Serving
• Budget Settings
  • Ad Delivery
  • Bidding Options
• Calculate Your Maximum Bid
• AdWords Editor
• Google Analytics
• Split Testing
• Invalid Clicks
• My Client Center
• AdWords API
• Resources

Hope to see you there.

Information on Google’s website
Registration Page

There have been several threads lately about AdSense publishers receiving letters from Google about their accounts being closed on June 1. The most common reason for the dismissal from the AdSense program has been ‘unfit business model’.

The speculation is that these letters are mostly being sent to publishers who are using arbitrage as their business model, which makes sense as the Google AdSense TOS has included provisions that one should not make pages just to serve ads.

I find it very interesting that this is occurring before Google rolls out their new advertiser report which lets advertisers run stats across the content network.

I’m in the beta program which lets me see click through rates, conversion rates, dollars paid, etc to every site in the content network sending me traffic. It’s a fantastic idea, and one many advertisers will applaud. It will also force content sites to send better traffic since advertisers will have this visibility.

It seems the timing of these two items are mysteriously close to each other.

I was searching for some information on Google’s site today and came across an offer to advertise on Google’s homepage and pay on a CPM basis.

In 2002, there was an advertising program on Google.com which was called AdWords. One could pay Google a CPM rate and have one’s ad appear. Later, Google released AdWords select which is the PPC model we’re familiar with today.

For a while, both AdWords and AdWords Select ads appeared on Google. Later, Google dropped the CPM program and went with just the PPC AdWords Select advertising method.

Very quietly, they dropped the ’select’ and just called it AdWords.

Most people probably don’t remember the days when one could double serve on Google with both a CPM and a PPC ad. However, this page would be a confusing offer to some, and yet an offer others would jump at the chance to take advantage of.

It’s not really available anymore, however, the offer is still on the web.

Do you have old pages still on the web that no longer apply to your business?

A little nostalgia for those of us who used both AdWords and AdWords Select:

Every wonder what your AdWords mobile ad looks like on a mobile phone? How about on a different carrier? Or in a different country?

Similar to the search preview page, Google launched an search preview page, Google launched an ad preview page for mobile (http://www.google.com/m/adpreview).

The really nice part is the on screen segmentation controls. It’s very easy to switch views depending on:

• Country & Carrier
• Spoken language
• Markup language
• Search type

This is a nice tool to be able to see a mobile result to understand what the consumer sees and the advertising competition.

Google is finally allowing advertisers to see where their ads are shown on the content network.

However, Google even goes further and allows advertisers to see the conversion and click through rates by content site.

Google’s newest beta report allows advertisers to run reports that are specific to the content network. Finally, advertisers can have full visibility into the often hidden world of the content network.

This will finally allow advertisers to learn:

• Where their ads are being shown
• What sites are converting
• Understand if they wish to use site targeting
• Which sites to block from displaying your ads
• What smart pricing is really doing for your costs

This will mean very different things for both publishers and advertisers. Today, the focus is the advertiser.

How to find Content Network Information

In your AdWords account, go to the ‘reports’ tab and find ‘placement reporting. Selecting this button will let you run a content network report.

There are several options for segmenting the data under the ’settings section’.

• Level of detail
  • AdGroup
  • Campaign
  • Account
• Domain or URL
• Time View (summary, daily, etc)
• Date Range
• Which campaigns or AdGroups to include

Next is the good part, customize your columns. You can also view conversions! Finally, advertisers will have the ability to view conversions and clicks by site across the entire content network.

Finally, you can filter, save the report template, etc.

While you’re waiting for the report to run, Google displays the following box:

Placement Performance report tips: This report shows performance metrics (including impressions, clicks, and cost) for content network sites displaying your ads. When you review these metrics:

• Don’t focus on clickthrough rate (CTR): Content network CTR doesn’t affect your ad ranking on the search network. Learn more.
• Think in terms of conversions: You can use Google’s free Conversion Tracking tool to determine whether site performance meets your ROI objectives. Learn more.
• Consider the site targeting feature: You can increase your exposure on top performing sites. Learn more.
• Wait for statistically significant data: For sites without much performance data, wait a while before making a final judgment. Learn more.

Some of the above information is very important to remember. One should never worry about the click through rate for content. It’s not one of the quality score factors.

And then finally the numbers. You will easily be able to compare site targeting to pay per action ads to every site on the content network where your ads are showing.

No longer will advertisers be in the dark about where their ads are showing. You can now have visibility into the network, block non-converting sites, and even target sites directly that are converting.

This is a huge win for advertisers. Many thanks to AdWords for finally introducing this report. Next, because there’s always more that advertisers desire, would be visibility into search partners.

The key to a successful AdWords campaign is account organization, visibility into numbers, and then optimizing based upon that data.

Finally, advertisers have visibility into the content network numbers. It’s time for content network optimization.

The newest version of the AdWords editor is now live.

The latest version offers new functionality for:

• Geographic targeting
• Image ads
• Some drag and drop functionality

For those using preferred bidding, you can not change the bidding types through the editor (i.e. switch from max CPC to preferred to budget optimizer). However, if your campaign is using preferred bidding, any bid updates you make to that campaign will function properly (i.e. not cause a conflict and update your preferred bid).

If you use geographic targeting, get the editor - the new interface is quite easy to use and it will save a lot of time from logging into the interface.

Overall, a nice release.

Full release notes.

AdWords editor download page.

When:
Boston, MA- Tuesday June 26th, 2007

Where:
Omni Parker House
60 School Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108
Phone 617.227.8600
Driving Directions

Times:
Registration: 7:30 - 8:00 AM
Morning Session: 8:00 - 12:00 PM
Lunch Break: 12:00 - 1:00 PM
Afternoon Session: 1:00 - 5:00 PM

Breakfast and Refreshments Served

Agenda:

Morning:

• The Search Process
• Best Practices
• Keywords
  • Generating Keywords
  • Creating Keyword Lists
  • Match Type
• Negative Keywords
• AdWords Keyword Tool
• Effective Search Ads
• Landing Pages
• Optimizing AdWords Accounts
  • Optimizing For Traffic
  • Optimizing For Conversions
  • Optimizing For Quality Score
  • Optimizing For the Content Network
• Conversion Tracking
• AdWords Tools
  • Traffic Estimator
  • Copy/Move Keywords/Ad Text
  • Advanced Search and Editing
  • Ad Diagnostic Tool
  • Disapproved Ads Tool
  • Change History
• Reporting Options

Afternoon:

• Advanced Ad Types
  • Local Business Ads
  • Image Ads
  • Video Ads
  • Mobile Ads
• IP Targeting & Geo Keywords
  • Local Targeting Options
• Advanced Ad Display
  • Ad Scheduling
  • Position Preference
  • Ad Serving
• Budget Settings
  • Ad Delivery
  • Bidding Options
• Calculate Your Maximum Bid
• AdWords Editor
• Google Analytics
• Split Testing
• Invalid Clicks
• My Client Center
• AdWords API
• Resources

Hope to see you there.

Information on Google’s website
Registration Page

Google offers four different bidding methodologies. I detailed the advantages and disadvantages in today’s Search Engine Land Paid Search column.

Here’s a quick compatibility chart to see the functionality of each bidding methodology.