Google Chrome Browser To Be Released

Google will release a new browser tomorrow called Google Chrome.  It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Google will release a browser, a phone, or anything else remotely related to search and internet advertising.  They have LOTS of smart people working on how to make the internet better and this will clearly be a browser that focuses on things they view as important.

It seems like a natural extension of the Google Toolbar to release a browser and it will be interesting to see how this affects my perceived perception that Firefox is being adopted by more and more internet surfers.

The release will be announced on the Google Blog tomorrow - September 2nd.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html

Creating An Effective Landing Page for PPC

A landing page is a page on your web site that visitors are directed to for a specific reason once they click a link. Usually you want this page focused on an individual product or service in order to get the visitor to take a particular action quickly.

Before creating the landing page you should ask yourself questions such as:
•    What are you offering?
•    Who are you offering it to?
•    What is attractive about your offer for them?
•    What steps do they need to take to participate in your offer?

Once you’ve figured out the answers to these question design the page, make it as clear and simple as possible without over-selling it. Write short statements for your copy that provide real value to the reader and include a way a visitor can contact you if they have further questions.

Elements you should have on your page include:
•    A definite call to action that is repeated throughout the copy
•    Ask and answer questions that address some problem you are selling the solution to
•    Testimonials
•    White space, headings and complimentary colors that make specific points stand out
•    A bonus at the end

Beyond that, make sure your page has a fast load time and nothing is lost below the fold for the smallest average screen size. Following these steps can increase the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns and ultimately make your business more money. However, don’t forget to test these landing pages continuously. After all, there is always room for improvement.

Google Paid Search Ad Scheduling

With Google’s semi-recent introduction of Ad Scheduling (day parting), advertisers can now easily limit distribution of their ads to specific times of the day. Limiting your impressions to peak activity times can help improve your click through rate and ultimately conversion rate. In many cases, this can be as easy as limiting your distribution to regular business hours. However, depending on the site, this may not be the most effective approach.

To start, identify trends in peak ordering times. Conversely, you should also identify dead times…..when you get high traffic, page views, etc with a disproportionate amount of orders. By removing your ads from distribution during the dead times, you can save money and spend more during the peak ordering times. For example, if the you find the highest percentage of orders coming in during lunch hours, take advantage of this data and increase your exposure during these peak hours.

Another point to consider are the early morning hours. Keep in mind that your daily budget resets at midnight. If you have not historically seen orders coming in until 6am…..it would be a good test to start running your ads around 6am. With a new daily budget at 12am, you may see your CPC prices increase. Advertisers with smaller budgets will gradually begin to disappear throughout the day…leaving the remaining advertisers paying a lower CPC. To take advantage of this lower CPC, try eliminating distribution of your ads during some of those off-peak business hours.

Future Prediction for SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and the search engine policies which affect it, have gone through a number of changes in the past several years. Keyword META tags became less important, Google changed its policy on paid and reciprocal links, and the number of major search engines reduced to about four, while various practices like “Google bombing” came and went. What are some predictions for the possible future of SEO?

- Increasing search engine restrictions upon what defines “acceptable” links (which are useful for SEO purposes), along with widespread use of the “nofollow” tag, will make it more difficult and expensive for new websites to reach a substantial audience, in the near future.

- Search engines will eventually upgrade their “spiders” so that they can navigate more kinds of websites, possibly including the major types of animated menu systems. At present, “spiders” only follow text-based links when looking for the individual pages of a site.

- Websites won’t have to pay search engines as much for PPC listings when their regular rankings for keywords improve; PPC links aren’t as valuable if the same site already appears on the first page of unpaid results. This would additionally promote SEO as an effective way to reduce websites’ PPC costs.

- Metasearch engines like Search.com, Dogpile, Info.com, and Webcrawler will gain popularity in the future, thus additionally increasing the value of getting listed in the Open Directory Project (often used in metasearches) and promoting more SEO work aimed at optimizing for engines other than Google.

- There are over 168 million websites (according to netcraft.com). As this number continues to increase in the future, highly-specific original content will become even more important to achieving success on the internet, and it will need search engine optimization to have much chance of reaching a substantial audience.

- More engines will start to integrate “social” features into their search results, like rating, voting, or even commenting upon individual results. As part of SEO, it will become more important to make sure page titles and descriptions are likely to produce realistic expectations and satisfied users.

- If Microsoft does acquire Yahoo at some time in the future, it will be in more of a position to dictate acceptable SEO practices as Google occasionally does. With the combined market share of Yahoo, MSN, and the smaller engines they provide results for, their SEO related policies would be difficult to ignore.

Google and Yahoo Deal Questioned

Google has already faced quite a bit of examination for their proposed advertising partnership with Yahoo and now they are on the receiving end of a little more. During separate House and Senate hearings on Internet competition recently Capitol Hill turned their attention to the potential deal.

Executives from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft were all questioned by lawmakers about the impact consumers and advertisers would face from the deals. An announcement made by Google last month about providing search advertising for Yahoo is what brought about the hearings.

A main concern is that Yahoo will be reduced to “a satellite in the Google orbit” should the deal go through. And the Justice Department is investigating whether a Google and Yahoo deal would create a monopoly.
Google and Yahoo defend their deal as a way to deliver more relevant ads to consumers and more valuable leads to advertisers.

Google and Yahoo defended the partnership as a way to deliver more relevant ads to consumers and more valuable leads to advertisers. And David Drummond, Google’s general counselor, stated that Yahoo would still be selling its own ads which means that deal wouldn’t lead to Google having ultimate control in the search ad market.

Under the deal, Google would provide search advertising to run with some Yahoo searches in the United States and Canada. Yahoo is estimated to receive as much as $800 million annually from the deal.

Microsoft argues that allowing the two biggest players in search advertising to combine efforts would give Google control of 90 percent of the market and allow it to raise prices and have unprecedented access to information about consumers’ online habits.