Masterlink Interactive Blog

MSN Adcenter has been around for awhile with increasing smaller traffic results. Bing has reversed this trend in the last year or so, but their numbers are about to jump significantly. Yahoo Sponsored Search results will cease to exist before the end of September; they will be all MSN Adcenter based ads!

Of course, most of you reading this already know that, but many of you really aren’t prepared to manage Bing results like a pro. I mean, their total piece of the market got down to less than 10%. Microsoft has taken a lot of time getting their interface right, and the old Live Search engine experience didn’t make the experience any better. The bad news is that there will be growing pains and a few bumps in the road before, during and after the hand-off process. The good news is that the interface is much easier to operate, and the traffic will be worth. The great news is that getting started like a pro is easy. All you have to do is download my walk-through, follow the steps, and “Bing!” you’re ready to start getting MSN Adcenter clicks.

All you need is a well done Google AdWords account, and a Bing Master Account. If you don’t have either of those you will need to get them. This article is really only about promoting the process of exporting your Google AdWords account to MSN Adcenter. That’s the easy part.

Of course, you probably already have a Yahoo account, and Yahoo has assured you that they will handle the conversion process to Bing. There are only two problems with the Yahoo to Bing conversion process. For starters, they use totally different match types; Google uses almost identical ones to Bing. Most Yahoo to Bing conversions will not be as successful as a Google to Bing conversion. The other problem only arises if you don’t have a Yahoo account; maybe you’re reading this after September?

Just view below or download the presentation, and see if it’s something that will work for you. I hope you enjoy it!

If it seems like your business is only as good as its dot on an online smartphone map, well… you might not be that far from the truth.

Masterlink Interactive on Mapquest Mobile

Location-based searching matters—more than ever—in the Internet marketing world. In fact, Google reported that nearly a third of its searches now pertain to the searcher’s location. In other words: “Tire shops near Beltline” or {ahem} “Internet marketing gurus in Dallas off 75 Central.”

As we discussed last week, it has everything to do with the rise of smartphones and mobile web design, and the ballooning expectation for and reliance upon the ability to access important information on the fly.

Perhaps no company understands the importance of capitalizing on this trend than online map and direction giving/business searching/real-life maze solving site MapQuest. Despite helping pioneer the online map and driving direction world, MapQuest has been bleeding market share to competitors like Google Maps for years.

But the company saw smartphones as its way back into the game, and jumped at the chance to carve out a niche with its MapQuest Navigator iPhone app. In addition to the comprehensive maps it offers, the site has loaded up with nifty bells and whistles that capitalize on why smartphone users are relying on such maps in the first place.

It added its own “streetview” function, allowing users to become more familiar with an area before arriving there. There’s voice-guided “turn-by-turn” navigation and route-optimization. There’s a search for local businesses (parking garages, coffee shops, gas stations, etc.) along each route. It even boasts a mapped-out gas prices tracker.

More importantly (at least from a Internet marketing perspective), it features a host of information sharing and searching capabilities, like Facebook connectivity that allows users to share location-based recommendations more easily (and access others’ recommendations).

Apparently, with its finger on the pulse of the mobile searching community, this new approach is working:

“We’re one of the most downloaded applications on the iPhone, despite the fact that other options are built in,” said MapQuest CEO David Cole to WebProNews. The site reached nearly 50 million unique visitors in July 2009.

So how can you make location-based searching work for your Dallas-area business?

Contribute information to online map sites. MapQuest is encouraging local businesses to submit information like menus, coupons, and contact information.

A mobile-friendly website matters, as does an awareness of your clientele. If they’re local, design your SEO local. If you’re pita stop in Plano, don’t spend all your effort trying to conquer the Google search rankings for “great Middle Eastern food,” or even “Dallas Middle Eastern restaurants.” Try “Middle Eastern food in Plano” instead. You’ll be competing against a more narrow search term field, and smartphone users with a hankering for falafel will thank you — and use those MapQuest features to help others thank you as well.

Let your customers do the work for you. If your product is worth sharing, it will find its way onto Twitter, Facebook, MapQuest and more. You just need to lay the groundwork with a site that responds to their searches (and a product that makes them think you’re worth sharing).

The Apple “It’s Only Rock n Roll” Event happened with Steve Jobs appearing in public the first time this year. With the fan-fare came the expected release of the new iPod, iPhone, and iTunes releases. In the interest of full disclosure, I am an owner of the new 3Gs. With Obama being a Blackberry customer, the smart phone revolution is in full swing!

I can never avoid the temptation to go see how each of the searches engines fare in comparison to new news. The first thing I look at is the displayed text on the search results page to see if there are any relevant terms. After which I click on some of the links to see if I gain anything of use. Using the keyword “iTunes” in this case would theoretically contain relevant terms such as “iTunes 9” or possibly “iPhone OS 3.1”. The next thing I look for are the dates to see how fresh the content is. This may require me clicking into the link to check, as well. The third thing I look at is the layout combined with the variety of relevant items. The last one seems to be superfluous, but in all honesty, who really wants to see a single, vertical column of nothing but Wikipedia links?

I always start with Ask.com. Jeeves may have left (but he’s back in the UK!), but I think many of us remember AskJeeves fondly. Besides, as far as traffic goes, Ask is still competitive with Bing.com. Either way, it quickly becomes clear why Ask is no longer considered a “major” search engine.

The term “iTunes” returned a somewhat barren, but clean results page. Each of the links had a “binoculars” icon that allowed a mouse-over preview of the link. Without the “binoculars” I would have been discouraged as the only relevant terms discussed were iTunes 8, which sounds like slow indexing to me.

There was an image mid-way down the page with a couple relevant-looking links. I clicked on both of them and realized they were forum pages for their Q&A (beta) tab. A few of the links on the main search result page did wind up discussing iTunes 9, the iPhone. They were scant on details and they did not include the latest relevant terms. Most of the links were a month or two old.

What I did like is being able to find the listings of numerous songs provided in iTunes along with easily accessible iTunes download pages. The “binoculars” icon is a nice feature. The Q&A Tab could grow into something more like Yahoo Answers over time.

Unfortunately, I find Ask slipping faster and further behind in the search race. Next week I’ll see how Bing stacks up in comparison.

According to the Search Engine Journal, Google is currently in negotiations to begin offering paid movies and shows on YouTube. Hulu and Apple are already knee-deep in paid content. Amazon is now offering paid videos online, and Yahoo is exploring the possibilities. How long will it be before Microsoft gets into the game? Begun the video wars have.

Some of these services draw you in by giving lots of free content. Some just have a good pricing scheme. Each one of them is stepping directly into the “streaming” content that Blockbuster and Netflix have already pioneered via rental service agreements.

Rentals sound great until users look at their monthly bills and realize they’re being nickel-and-dimed to death. The word “subscription” is being thrown about wildly. After all, these companies have to pay for the infrastructure and bandwidth to support the viewings.

Many web companies have tried to use advertising to avoid this outcome. Still, they’re all finding that it just can’t support everything as Joost found out the hard way. They’re going to keep the site running, but they’re joining Crackle in being one of the numerous video application providers.

This all comes down to the question over whether free online video content will eventually join the horse-drawn cart in the dustbins of history. If this comes to pass, video stars such as Thunderf00t, communitychannel, hotforwords, and even the lovable Fred Figglehorn.

Even if the signs are on the horizon, the winds of change won’t blow in overnight. So, in the meantime, let’s all enjoy the free video content throughout the internet.

Google Chrome, while still in beta, has been slowly finding its way onto increasingly larger percentages of existing computers. Google Wave has been released to developers and may practically re-invent the way we work on the internet. Twitter Search has forced Google’s hand into pushing for more real-time searches and the unveiling of Google Caffeine. Google OS has been announced for release in a couple years.

Bing has single-handedly saved Microsoft search from plunging into the depths of internet obscurity, while reversing the decreasing revenue trends that normally spell death for a search network. Microsoft has also pulled off a coup almost two years in the making by assuming the role of Yahoo’s search engine. Microsoft has issued a widespread beta release of their version of the Content Network.
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This winner-take-all chess match should also determine if the desktop machine will remain the preeminent computational workhouse with cloud-computing a serious option.

We get it guys. You’re two technology behemoths that are in a no-holds-barred, fight to the death to see who will define Web 3.0. Well that’s just it isn’t it? It won’t be Microsoft or Google that get to decide the internet’s advancement. The users get a seat at the big-kid table, too. If the user didn’t get the say, then Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter would have never entered our common geek vernacular.

Not a day goes by without the two juggernauts beating their chest about something or other. Meanwhile, they’re still behind in the real-time search field, and Facebook just got FriendFeed for their part. The last-time I checked Ask was still pretty competitive with Bing in search volume. Apple is quickly eating up the mobile devices department with its own iPhone. Firefox is making huge leaps and bounds in the browser wars.

It’s fun to watch while big companies go head-to-head. The only winner can be the consumer. Still, let’s not take our eyes off the ball, and remember what counts; the user.

You can advertise on search networks, popular blogs, video sharing sites, social networking platforms, television, radio, newspapers, and phone books. Let’s not forget smart phones, billboards, magazine, newsletters and even weekly church bulletins. There are so many places your potential customer could be found, and you only have so much advertising budget to go around.

You’re not sure where to put your next advertising dollars. I get it, as do all marketers. We live in a state of constant media “noise”, and we ourselves are fighting for a seat at the table. We want your dollars. You aren’t even sure you want to spend them, but business has been tight lately. Your sales force has had more time on their hands, and you’ve had to let a few people go.

Well, if you’ve gotten this far you’ve probably already found a good solid source or two for marketing. Perhaps you’ve reached the point with them that you can’t squeeze any more out of those sources. Maybe they have even become less dependable outlets for advertising. So, what’s the next step? How do you make that big investment that saves your company?

As an employee of an agency our goal is gain as much of your advertising dollars as possible. It only makes sense to do that. The smart companies “test the waters” as they say. They often give a smaller, short-run contract to agencies like mine. They usually do this with two to three agencies, sometimes simultaneously to gauge success. If the results are lacking for an agency they have not invested or lost much. If the results are great then the company rewards that agency with a bigger and longer contract.

Be one of the smart companies. Test the waters. Make the agency prove they deserve your dollars. That way you never have to fear the big investment.

Hey guys. I wanted to get a top five or a top ten list out since I love lists, but in memory of July 4th I’ll do a top four. I’ll be quick so that everyone can prepare to have drinks while handling excessively large amounts of explosives. You know, because that’s what the Founding Fathers would have wanted us to do, right?

1. The wrong email - How many times have we sent a great email, and we realized it was sent to the wrong person? How about a simple typo that changed the meaning of the whole blast? It is simple to send out a short apology paragraph. Just make sure to include the original ‘intended’ email. Oh, beg humbly for forgiveness for the SPAM. As much as I don’t like trying to decipher another person’s goof I really don’t get nervous about SPAM when I see another one from them quickly. Help set aside your recipients’ fears.

2. Lame or spammy subject - Email blasts are opportunities to keep in touch your client list. Abusing that privilege is counter-productive. Lame subject lines are not only a waste of your time, since they probably won’t be read, they’re also just as likely to get your client to unsubscribe. A lot of emails are vying for your users’ short attention spans; you have to stand out from the crowd. Spammy subject lines are guaranteed to get your emails blocked and possibly get you flagged in the future.

3. No alternative to images - I’ve seen many great emails sent to me that looked awful simply because my mail client wouldn’t automatically show images. Once I allowed the images from the particular emails they looked great. If your layout doesn’t look decent without images, create a text alternative at least or try another layout. Send yourself tests to different email clients to see possible examples.

4. Non-attention grabbing - Don’t make your readers scroll to see what the email is about. If you have an offer, tell them at the beginning. Put the headline right at the top. Many users only see the first few lines of an email in a preview pane, and they use this to find out whether they want to open the email fully. The subject alone is not enough. If you’re offering 10% off then let them know right away. They’re more likely to keep reading to find out how to get the 10% off from that point.

Real-time search is one of the newest battlegrounds on the web. In fact, history may show real-time search as the development that saved social media sites like Twitter and Facebook as stand-alone entities.

You see, despite all of the growing attraction of web users to social media sites, the ugly truth is that most social media sites have never been able to show a long-term profit. Myspace has been the exception since completing a 3 year, $900 million advertising contract with Google in 2006, but there is no way to know whether Myspace will be able to maintain their Google contract or their profitability.

One common way of start-up companies making money is to auction their business to the best offer such as when Google bought Youtube. There have been rumors of numerous companies from Microsoft to Google and even Apple buying up Twitter.

Real-time search may just re-define how users use the internet. It is the ultimate combination of search and social media. Searching real-time information allows engines that provide the service to display as results that are happening across the web without delay. Since social media postings are updated frequently they are easily able to gain dominance in this sort of platform over traditional articles or blogs. Combining these results with ads seems to be the obvious sought after answer to the profitability questions. Below are some of the hottest real-time search engines across the web.

General Real Time Search

Collecta: This site has not quite reached beta, but the home page does provide two example sneak-peaks. The layout is likely to change before it gets to beta.

Google: Google recently launched a number of new features, and real-time search is one of them. This is found by doing a search from the Google main page, and then selecting “show options” directly under the Google logo. One of the options available is “Past 24 Hours”. Larry Page recently discussed real-time search at the Google Zeitgeist conference in the UK. It is difficult to imagine Google being left behind in anything search-related. The results from this page appear to contain very few, if any social media pages, so it is possible that Google is focused on displaying links that come from already trusted sources.

OneRiot: From the searches I’ve done this site also appears to show links indexed from posts on social media sites purely. They appear to rank the posts by popularity (re-tweets, diggs, ect. ) and how recently they were posted. Each link shows the original author’s logo or profile picture that posted the indexed link so that credit is given. While each of the sites give credit to the original posting author, this extra step may be the distinguishing feature makes OneRiot more favorable. The layout is a basic vertical format.

Scoopler: My favorite between each of these has been a toss-up between Scoopler and OneRiot. Scoopler appears to index any links it from posts all over the web as fast as possible, though I did not notice any repeat links. While this allows for seeing a lot of information this also allows for a site like Twitter to dominate the results. To combat one domain dominating the results the site provides popular searches and popular links that are posted throughout the web. The site also automatically displays the next result on the page without requiring the user to refresh or click a button. The layout is probably the best out of the four general real-time search engines.

Twitter-Based Real Time Search

Twitter Search: The search feature allows a user to search all of Twitter’s posts for the specific keywords. While the search is only for Twitter users it is a very powerful tool.

TweetMeme: This tries to display Twitter posts by popularity as well as organizing the posts by categories. It has a search option that mimics Twitter Search for the most part, and each link has a button that allows the user to re-Tweet the link in question. There also seems to be a lot of integrating features with Twitter, which may help it keep from being disregarded as Twitter Search expands.

Twitmatic: Much like TweetMeme, Twitmatic tries to integrate with Twitter by having a Twitter login link directly on the page. It only indexes videos posted on Twitter. I tried multiple attempts to search on two different days with no success after at least 10 minutes. This service will need to be at least serviceable to attract users.

The recession is making the change away from “old media” far more rapid than it would have occurred otherwise. While we are concerned about the downfall of some traditional companies, like the NY Times, the rise of some of the newer companies is being missed.

Hulu.com is now one of the best, yet legal sources for watching shows and movies. They have a wide array of videos ranging from over a half decade to some that were aired the previous night. Youtube is now following in their footsteps, and they have the backing of the all-mighty Google. The “old media” are just now discovering the importance of these, on-demand, sites. Watch the video to the right.

Each of these services, Hule and YouTube, are being paid by simply displaying ads just like on regular television. Why did the big media corporations like NBC miss this obvious opportunity? To be fair they actually are posting some of their shows, like Heroes, on their own site, and the imbedded video on the right is also hosted their, but they could easily have led the wave of the television merging onto the internet. They missed the opportunity because many “old media” executives don’t want to change their entire method of making money. They’ve made money the same way for so many years, and they’ve seen no reason to change it, now. Instead, they’ve spent most of their time trying to make television more relevant to the lives’ of the average person.

What they misunderstood was that the concept of television isn’t what is becoming less relevant. What is becoming less valuable is the medium on which television is being played across. The same is true in the music industry.

The music industry has tried punishing individuals that have illegally downloaded their music on the internet for years. The record companies successfully took down Napster in the early 2000’s and used the courts to fine thousands of its users. The backlash from the internet users was profound.

Swedish courts just sent four of the people running the Pirate Bay, a popular file-sharing site, to jail for allowing users to illegally exchange movies and music files. Alas, this will not stop the users either.

It should be noted that I am not endorsing the illegal sharing of files. I am simply noting that the number of people sharing files illegally has gone up significantly over the years, and stopping them appears to be a losing battle.

Two lessons any company must learn when approaching the internet are:

1. The spread of information cannot be stopped. One can only try to affect how people view that information.
2. People naturally follow the path of the least resistance. Rather than stop the way users act on the internet, take advantage of their habits.

With so many people needing to cut costs, they will inevitably cut the least important costs first. How about TV? It can all be seen online. What about land lines? Cell phones work perfectly fine. Don’t we need newspapers? We can get all our news and classifieds online as well. What will we do for entertainment? Maybe we’ll pick up a pack of popcorn at the store and spend a night watching episodes of The Family Guy on Hulu.com or read interesting information on Digg.com or Reddit.com.

The fact is that businesses are going to have to adapt to the internet users. They can’t continue to do business the way they always have, or they will no longer be in business.

All too often I am horrified while reviewing a Google Adwords account. I run into bad campaign settings, large numbers of keywords with poor quality scores, and unappealing ad copy. Even the most studious of novices make what seem to be blatant errors.

Google originally created the Adwords interface as a user-friendly way for new advertisers and old-school veterans alike to be able to immediately jump into the wonderful world of online pay-per-click advertising. The tools that Google has provided are very helpful, and spending money has never been easier.

The idea of turning money into traffic has become extremely palatable to modern business users, but very simple mistakes can destroy any potential success an ad might generate. I thought a quick run-down of the common errors and a couple extra tips thrown into the mix would be helpful.

1. Language Preference Settings – This is accessible through the campaign settings. It is not good practice to select a campaign to display in all languages when the ad is written in English. Google will permit this circumstance to occur, but Google does not translate the ad. Non-English speakers will still see an English ad!

2. Display URL’s are part of the ad copy – A user’s eyes have a hard time distinguishing the words in www.myfavoritebusinesswebsite.com. The words in the URL all run together making it a non-selling point in an ad. The more effective solution is to type www.MyFavoriteBusinessWebsite.com. Now, it jumps out to users’ eyes and encourages them to click.

3. Keyword Relevancy - Including a bunch of keywords in one adgroup and writing an ad that sounds general enough to apply to all keywords is not an effective short-cut. All keywords must be closely related to each other in nature to be successful. Ex. Hammers may be used to put a crib together. They may also both be retail products. The may even be sold by the same manufacturer. Still, hammers and cribs don’t belong in the same adgroup.

4. “Free” keywords do not sell – If you’re trying to sell something, going after keywords with the word “free” is the easiest way to get a good click-through-rate and a terrible conversion rate. When users are searching for something free they are not looking to buy something.

5. The Content Network works – I frequently hear that the Content Network just doesn’t convert. That is simply not true, but the conversion rates are usually lower than search. The bids are usually lower though which frequently makes for an effective cost-per-conversion. My suggestion is to opt your search campaigns out of the Content Network and create a separate “Content Network only” campaign (credit my friend and sensei Brandy Eddings) This makes it easier to eyeball the general stats on the campaign summary screens, and to manage them separately (as they should be). It’s good to test different bidding on the Content Network by raising and lowering the bids until you find the optimum cost-per-conversion amount. I frequently find Google’s help sections inadequate, but their info on this subject is superb. Google Help