Whilst setting up and optimising campaigns for job boards, I have come across some real problems paid search has with punctuation.

The two seem to not like each other, and search engines tend to remove the punctuation from your search query, or simply ignore it (even though it is still present in Google’s SERP URL). Even worse, if your search query has a hyphen (-), then the search engine might even think that you are trying to exclude a search term by turning it into a negative search term.

But what happens when 75% of the term you are bidding on is punctuation? [Read more →]

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We have all heard of Hitwise. Their data is widely regarded as industry leading information, and their sample size is massive (One third of the UK market). You might have even worked with them, or have a client that has their package installed. In any of these cases, we all know the bottom line: It’s a hell of price to pay, and will definitely be a big hit in your budget.

Hitwise data is the most accurate data out there, and they regularly compile industry information regarding search engine market shares.

photo credit: dannysullivan

So, What can Hitwise do for me?

I have recently been to a presentation of the product, and a demonstration of what it can do tell you to do. And in that respect, the short answer is ‘yes’: why would you not want to see what is happening to your competitors’ websites? If you can monitor what your competitor is doing, then great, that must come in handy somewhere down the line… but will it?

[Read more →]

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I’ve been thinking a lot recently about to what extent big brands should maintain a presence in social networks. Should they have an official home even though they might not really fit in or should their staff participate where the conversation is already taking place in a semi-official capacity or any number of other possibilities.

photo credit: c3o

One way or another I though I ought to see how many of the UK’s (and the worlds) biggest brands have a presence onTwitter and Facebook and whether they have squaters with their brand name as a username. [Read more →]

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Everyday Twitter is becoming a more essential way to communicate with the SEO industry. The ability to quickly & frequently communicate with your peers is truly powerful.

credit: Ol.v!er [H2vPk] - It really was a photo finish

I like to think of it as passive intimacy (which I’ll prob write more about in the next weeks) However while it’s all about building relationships with people; it’s always nice to have a old fashioned leader board to see who is the most popular in the industry. [Read more →]

Tags: Search Marketing // 5 Comments »

We received a poisened gift today here at SiteVisibility… It seems that after MSN’s failed acquisition of Yahoo, the Live Search Team have now changed their objective and decided to go after Search Marketers all together in order to erradicate our (endangered) species:

[Read more →]

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Everybody in the world of SEO wants links. Link bait has become one of the most effective uses of your time to attract those links, so much so a good friend of mine is making a good living offering specifically a linkbait creation service.

photo credit: internets_dairy I’m not hungry for links no more

But lots of people don’t know where to start when it comes to creating a link worthy piece of text that’s going to appeal to the linkerati. [Read more →]

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It’s not often that Yahoo rolls out a new feature that turns out to be a great success, so when something is done right, and works, this time I’ve gotta give them Kudos.

The “Ad Generator” button that you might have seen appear at the top of your ad group, is a friend so don’t ignore it. I am also going to explain to you why it also is your client’s advertising agency’s best friend.

The Ad Generator is a very simple tool. All it does is concatenate terms that you have entered into the Ad Generator, thus generating new ads: Say you enter 3 ad titles and 5 USPs (Description line 1 usually) and 5 Calls to Action (Description line 2 usually), then the AdGenerator will mix and match these USPs/Ad titles and test them out to see which performs the best.

So why is something that you can do in Excel so great?

Are you really going to concatenate this data manually? photo credit: Jeffrey Beall

[Read more →]

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We’ve found Yahoo Answers a great place to introduce social media marketing to our clients, it’s got a mainstream audience, it can send targeted traffic and doesn’t require the same level of commitment as creating a blog or podcast.

photo credit: geoffeg Pipes clearly are the answer

For those familiar with the site the users pose questions which then the community offer their solutions and then asker can vote which they think is the most useful.

As the links are no-followed they don’t have a search engine ranking benefit we don’t want to spend too much time searching for questions we could answer, fortunately another Yahoo product Pipes came to the rescue. [Read more →]

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I finished this white-paper off about how job boards, recruitment companies and internal human resource departments a little while ago but I’m really pleased I can finally unleash it to the public at large.

It’s quite an involved read but if you’re just trying to grasp how social media can work in the recruitment sector it’ll get you up to speed and if you’re fully immersed it’ll give you some great in-depth tips.

You can download it here, or read our lovely marketing bumph below.

[Read more →]

Tags: Online Recruitment, Job Boards, Social Media // 1 Comment »

October usually is the time of year PPC managers & optimisers choose to start studying to pass their tests with the different networks (Google, Yahoo, MSN), as the Google Accreditation is valid for one year, from that month onwards… so it’s not officially revision month, but I have just passed the MSN Ad Excellence Test with flying colours (just under 90%), and thought I d let you guys know about a few tips and tricks you should know before passing the test. [Read more →]

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