From ClickZ: Below, the top 10 search terms by search volume. Data are provided by Hitwise.

Top 10 Search Terms by Category, Four Weeks Ending October 28, 2006 (%)
IT and Internet		Automotive Manufacturers
Search Term	Search Volume	Search Term	Search Volume
paypal	4.30	ebay	1.08
paypal.com	1.09	kelly blue book	1.03
people search	0.89	used cars	0.64
white pages	0.77	ebay motors	0.62
www.paypal.com	0.69	autotrader	0.58
pay pal	0.52	auto trader	0.54
mapquest	0.50	nascar	0.51
experian	0.46	cars.com	0.49
neteller	0.38	nascar.com	0.46
ebay	0.27	toyota	0.42
Movies		Internet Advertising
Search Term	Search Volume	Search Term	Search Volume
imdb	1.11	free samples	0.71
netflix	1.02	free stuff	0.46
movies	0.66	free	0.34
blockbuster	0.60	adwords	0.34
fandango	0.33	unclaimed money	0.33
netflix.com	0.28	work from home	0.31
saw 3	0.27	ares	0.26
harry potter	0.21	napster	0.25
hollywood video	0.21	www.smcorp.com	0.25
movie times	0.17	work at home	0.24
Food and Beverage Brands and Manufacturers		Pharmaceutical and Medical Products
Search Term	Search Volume	Search Term	Search Volume
pizza hut	1.77	lexapro	0.95
mcdonalds	1.48	cymbalta	0.57
starbucks	1.25	zoloft	0.48
www.maxwellhouse.com	0.61	viagra	0.40
candystand	0.61	pfizer	0.36
subway	0.55	herpes	0.35
betty crocker	0.51	xanax	0.34
candystand.com	0.50	cialis	0.29
burger king	0.48	depression	0.29
dominos pizza	0.48	merck	0.28
Blogs and Personal Web Sites		Broadcast Media
Search Term	Search Volume	Search Term	Search Volume
xanga	0.99	cnn	2.61
myspace	0.76	cnn.com	1.13
yahoo 360	0.48	msnbc	1.12
xanga.com	0.46	news	0.90
livejournal	0.42	fox news	0.82
www.xanga.com	0.40	sara evans	0.72
myspace.com	0.37	www.cnn.com	0.45
perez hilton	0.28	bbc	0.43
360	0.22	abc news	0.42
dailykos	0.22	bbc news	0.34
Shopping Rewards and Directories		Travel Destinations and Accommodations
Search Term	Search Volume	Search Term	Search Volume
consumer reports	0.22	hotels	0.56
halloween costumes	0.14	hotels.com	0.50
coupons	0.12	holiday inn	0.32
webkinz	0.10	disneyland	0.22
froogle	0.09	las vegas	0.18
free stuff	0.09	best western	0.17
mycokerewards.com	0.08	hampton inn	0.16
free samples	0.08	motel 6	0.15
www.webkinz.com	0.06	disney world	0.15
myrewardzone.com	0.06	days inn	0.15
View: Top 10 Search Terms by Category, Four Weeks Ending September 30, 2006

Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 Web sites across 160 industry categories. It collects Internet usage information through a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in panels. Data are collected in accordance with local and international privacy legislation and are audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Yahoo has begun converting advertisers to their new Panama ad system. Yahoo previously announced they were going to delay the launch of Panama earlier this year. Advertisers will be migrating to the new system in stages via an invite from Yahoo over the remainder of this year and early next year; however users may request an early upgrade from Yahoo.

Yahoo made the announcement after it said its quarterly profit slipped 38 percent and also forecast that fourth-quarter revenue will be below analyst expectations. The announcement immediately impacted Yahoo’s stock price, and may have implications for Google as well.

Panama’s new design promises to be more intuitive with the addition of Ajax and improved graphical interfaces. Also included in the new release is instant activation of keywords and enhanced forecasting features. Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim provides a great description of the new Yahoo Search Marketing system along with screenshots of the improved interface.

Yahoo also plans to change the ad ranking algorithm, taking ad quality into account as well as bids, similar to how Google Adwords currently works. This change will not be rolled out until early next year.

I, myself am extremely excited about the launch of Panama and cannot wait until we receive our account upgrade invite so I can begin using the new and improved features.

Yahoo has announced that rolled out an index update on October 10, 2006. Marketers should notice a change in some rankings and a shuffle of the pages in the index.

Matt Cutts, the well known engineer at Google, has also announced some updates going on at Google. Google just recently exported PageRank info, so people should be seeing some changes in PR as viewed in the Google toolbar. The rest of the changes at Google are infrastructure changes and deal with the Supplemental results and making sure that “site:” queries are more accurate. Google has also pushed out new “link:” query information to reflect more backlinks pointing at sites.

I also want to mention the recent upgrades to Yahoo’s Site Explorer. This program is a simpler and less enhanced version of Google’s Sitemaps program but is improving slowly. Check it out and watch for future enhancements. I also recommend converting your Google Sitemap to a Yahoo Sitemap and submitting it to Yahoo.

-Mark B

Recently, a federal judge issued a ruling that is shaking up the way that websites are designed. The ruling lets a lawsuit by the National Federation of the Blind against Target Corp. to proceed. This does not mean that Target has lost the suit, only that the case would not be dismissed and would proceed. The suit charges that Target’s website is inaccessible to the blind and therefore violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and several California laws designed to protect the disabled.

Targets argument for dismissal was that accessibility only applies to physical locations and not websites. The court disagreed saying that all services must be accessible to “persons with disabilities.”

How Does a Website Become Accessible to the Blind?

People who are blind commonly use text to speech software that dictates the contents of a website to them. This means that any images on a website that have text in them won’t be read by the speech software. For example, if you look at this site that sells yamaha parts you will notice that the navigation on the left has text that is presented as an image. There is a way to label the picture with any text you want so that a speech reader can speak to the contents of the image. This is done using an “Alt” tag. In the case of the Yamaha site, each image would need to be alt tagged with the same text that is contained in the image. So for the “buy accessories online” link, the code would have “alt=’buy accessories online’”. This way, a blind user would know to click that link if they are wanting to buy the accessories. Without these tags, the user would have to navigate to each page and hope that there is text on that page to tell them what the page is about.

A good example of proper alt tagging can be seen at the site of an extended auto warranty company. If you point your mouse over one of the green tabs that links to more info on the warranties, you alt text will appear (only in Internet Explorer, Firefox users must right click to view image properties). The text in the alt tag should reflect where the image link will take you in the site. Every image on this page has an alt tag provided.

How Does This Affect My Search Rankings?

Search engines act in a similar fashion to text to speech software because the search engine spiders that read your web page also cannot read text in images or decipher what the image contains. By using the alt tag you are able to tell the search engine what exactly is in the picture. Search engines also use this data to better help them when indexing images into their image search engines (images.google.com, search.yahoo.com/images & others).

When linking to a specific page, the search engines prefer that you use text, so that they can tell what the content of the page being linked to is about. Essentially, it is like voting for a page to rank well for a keyword in their search rankings using the text in the link. For example, if I wanted to link to the Complete Landsculpture site, I would use the text “Dallas landscape design“. If I used their logo to link to them, the search engines would see the link as having no text associated, so it would be like a vote without giving the site credit for the content it contains. This is why you need to alt tag the image with same text “Dallas landscape design” or something similar so that the search engines then know that that site is about landscape design. This will help to rank that site better for the text used either in the text link or as an alt tag.
You may be wondering, why not just stuff every image alt tag with keywords to rank better for those terms. The answer is that the search engines have evolved and can detect this keyword spamming. A rule of hand is to use a phrase less than 4 words to describe the image and don’t stuff keywords into the tag. Many people will tell you that the search engines don’t rank on alt tags but I can say that I have seen sites with only images show up in search results and the description that Google displayed used text found only in the alt tags.

How Can I See My Site Like a Text to Speech Reader or a Search Engine?

There are a few ways to make sure your site is readable to both the search engines and to people with disabilities. The first is to use a website standards validation tool. This also makes sure your site can be viewed properly in all browsers. All you do is put in the URL of the page you want to check and they will create a report with all errors. If you want to see how your site actually looks to search engines and browsers for the disabled you can use the SEO Browser tool or the Lynx text browser. This will strip all of the CSS styles and Images out of your site so you can view it at its most simple form.

For more in-depth analysis of the things you need to consider to make a site ADA compliant please click here.

Over at The ComTech News Blog Jack Spirko, who served in the US Army Airborne during the First Gulf War, has posted The Internet Marketers Creed. Jack has been involved in Internet marketing for 10 years and I can speak to his abilities due to a time in which we worked together. His post speaks to the passion and thought processes of interactive marketers and even printed a copy to hang by my desk.

This creed is a kickback to the Marine Corps Rifleman’s Creed as heard in the opening of the classic movie Full Metal Jacket. This creed by Jack speaks to all Internet marketers who truly have a passion for the art and science of Internet marketing.

Check it out and leave your comments to a guy who gave a bit of his life to serve our country!

Matt Cutts, a now famous engineer at Google, has posted six videos on Google Video answering different questions about SEO and Google’s ranking methods. He posted the first three and the last three at his blog.

* Session 1: Including qualities of a good site.
* Session 2: Including some SEO Myths.
* Session 3: Should you Optimize for Search Engines or for Users?
* Session 4: Static vs Dynamic URLs, organic geotargeting, sitemaps reporting
* Session 5: 301s with acquired domains, split testing, site architecture
* Session 6: All about Supplemental Results

Overall, this information can be very beneficial when wanting to adhere to the Google Webmaster Quality Guidlines.

-Mark Barrera

Coming to MasterLink this summer, the only thing I knew about Search Engine Optimization is that it impressed people to hear the title, even if they had no clue what it meant. Learning the ropes of SEO under Mark Barrera it all started to come together.

My first lesson was that companies do not pay for top rankings in Google, they had to earn them and that is what our job is as search engine marketers. My second lesson and maybe the most important was that SEO takes time. This is the first thing MasterLink tells their potential clients so they fully understand what to expect. This I have found to be true and backed by all the books I have read on the subject. My advice there would be to anyone working with a company who has given them false hope by telling them changes will happen instantly, we all know that Rome was not built in a day.

Another lesson I learned early on was that the industry is constantly changing. What is working for you today may not be the case tomorrow. Thus following changes in the industry from sites such as SearchEngineWatch is very necessary.

Something that caught me by surprise was that search engines such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo must know that your site exists. Meaning you can’t just slap your site up on the World Wide Web and have instant exposure to millions of people. What a sad and disillusioned soul I was, it’s pertinent that your page have quality site maps submitted to each search engine so they know exactly what you or your company is about.

The more tedious work involves pay per click campaigns. There is a lot going on and you must be at the top of your game to manage a successful PPC campaign. You have to look at many pieces such as conversion rates, click through ratios, impressions, and the average cost per click to inform you as to what you’re doing well and what you should do differently. This part of SEO is a little overwhelming when first introduced to, and time will make it easier, or at least I hope.

Aside from that SEO is overall a very fun and exciting industry to be a part of because it is constantly changing, never boring and always keeps you on your toes. Every day is different!

These are just a few of the many lessons I have learned during my short stint with MasterLink which goes to show that SEO is something that takes constant attention and top priority.

-Stuart Frazier
SEO Intern

Yahoo’s search marketing upgrade, code-named Project Panama, won’t arrive until at least the end of the year according to Yahoo Chairman and CEO, Terry Semel.

The upgrade is expected to bring Yahoo’s pay per click model more in line with Google’s. With Panama ads placement will be based on price and relevancy of ad. Currently, Yahoo places a paid ad solely based on the amount you are willing to pay for the keyword. The new algorithm will be similar to how Google AdWords works.

Yahoo had planned to release the upgrade in the third quarter, but Semel said during the company’s quarterly earnings call on Tuesday that the company was delaying the release of Panama to prevent disruption in ad purchasing and management during the holiday season.

“We think this is the right decision for ensuring the most successful commercial launch possible,” he said, adding that we should expect to start using the upgrade in 2007.

Whatever kind of business you are in, success and profitability start with marketing. Driving interest in your products and / or services is the number one goal for any company.

E-mail marketing is one of the most basic and effective marketing tools available today. It’s easy, affordable, direct, and powerful. When you add e-mail to your marketing plan, you spend less time, money and resources than with traditional marketing (ie: direct mail or print advertising). You can have your time-sensitive information sent in minutes, not days or weeks.
E-mail marketing also allows you to proactively communicate with both existing customers and prospects instead of quietly waiting for them to return to your website, visit your store or office, or call you on the phone.

E-mail marketing will also allow you to communicate more information, more often. Your communications can include newsletters, preferred customer promotions, sale notifications, new service announcements, event invitations, surveys and more.

With e-mail marketing you can see the results of your efforts instantly. The benefits obtained from most types of marketing and advertising are difficult to measure. With e-mail marketing, however, you can easily measure the number of e-mails delivered, e-mails opened, bounce backs, unsubscribes and click-through rates.

You can also tell who opened your e-mail, which links in your message resulted in the most clicks, who clicked on each link and how your contacts respond to surveys. All of this practical information can help you send targeted campaigns to those most likely to respond to your offer, significantly improving your results moving forward.

As previously reported, the agreement where Yahoo Sponsored Listings were being shown alongside search results in MSN will be coming to an end today. The end of this agreement was announced when MSN began running its MSN adCenter beta campaign earlier this year. MSN gradually reduced the percentage of sponsored ads being shown by Yahoo on its search listings and this transition to its own sponsored ads will be complete today. This change only affects US advertisers as non-US markets will still have Yahoo ads shown alongside the MSN results until adCenter is rolled out worldwide. The official announcement from Yahoo can be seen here.

This change should not cause much change for Yahoo Search Marketing clients as the transition has been gradual. Many accounts have noticed a decrease in their impressions as a result of not being shown alongside MSN search results. For advertisers looking to purchase sponsored listings in Microsoft’s new adCenter advertising platform can visit here or give MasterLink a call!

-Mark Barrera