Ads Next™ Local Internet Advertising, Annapolis, Maryland, Internet Advertising Solutions, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design and Integration, Social Media Marketing

Apple announced they plan on challenging Google in the mobile advertising space with a new iAds advertising platform.

By Laurence Knight

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs has placed himself head-to-head with rival Google in the budding mobile advertising market, by announcing a new iAd advertising platform to be rolled out this summer.

The announcement follows Apple’s purchase in January of mobile advertising network Quattro Wireless for $300m (£196m), demonstrating that Mr Jobs is happy to put his money where his mouth is.  Read More

Here is an interesting article by Ben Parr from Mashable that discusses the Newspaper Industry’s decline in advertising revenue in the last 10 years.  Although their advertising revenue has declined each year their online advertising revenue is increasing.

We’ve known for a long time that the newspaper industry as we know it is dying. The shift from print to online has been a painful process — but just how painful has it been?

On Wednesday, the Newspaper Association of America released its estimates for advertising revenue across the newspaper industry. The numbers for 2009 were nothing short of disastrous, once again bringing up a very tough question: Can newspapers find a way to survive? Read More

People often think that if you pay more per click that guarantees you a higher position in the search results.  This may have been the case years ago however now Google factors in two things when determining your Ad Rank.  One being the amount your bid and the other is your “Quality Score.” Maintaining a good quality score allows your ads to be in top postitions at a lower cost per click.

What is Quality Score?
Quality Score for Google and the Search Network is a dynamic metric assigned to each of your keywords. It’s calculated using a variety of factors and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad group and to a user’s search query. The higher a keyword’s Quality Score, the lower its cost-per-clicks (CPCs) and the better its ad position.

Here are 8 steps to improve your Adwords Quality Score

1. Generate a Relevant Keyword List
Generate a list of your business’s products and services.  Then use a keyword tool to research exactly how people search online for these products and services.  There may be many different variations for each product or service.  Start by picking the keywords that users search on the most.  And then test these keywords accordingly overtime to determine which ones perform best in your Adwords Campaign.

2. Separate Keywords into Groups
It is important to keep a very targeted list of keywords in each Adgroup. Focus on one product and service and group all related keywords to that product or service in one Adgroup. Driving traffic is important but it’s more important to drive the most qualified traffic to your website.  So keep your keyword lists very specific and focus on the goals you are trying to achieve from this traffic.

3. Create Relevant and Compelling Ads for Each Group
Create Ad Copy that is relevant to the list of keywords in each Ad Group.  Again the more specific and relevant the Ad copy is to your group of keywords the higher your quality score will be.  Also create ads that stand out above your competition.  Intrigue the user and make them want to find out more about what you are offering so they will then click on to your website and potentially become a new customer.

4. Split Test Your Ads
It’s important to run two or more ads at the same time to determine which ad will perform better.  You will want to monitor the performance.  If you notice that one ad is performing the best allow that one to display more frequently to improve overall quality score.

5. Make Your Landing Page Relevant
When you create your landing page, you want to make sure that your content is consistent with both your keywords and ad copy. Make sure that keywords are carried through to title tags, headers and body content.

6. Don’t Mislead a User
Make sure to deliver on the content people expect to find. Even if all of your keywords, ad copy and landing page content is relevant, if people don’t see what they thought they were getting, they will leave. A high bounce rate is another factor that will erode a high quality score.

7. Make it Clear and Easy
When you drive people to a landing page make sure the call to action is obvious.  Don’t display too much text.  Users don’t typically read all the text on a page they just scan through it.  Also having too many graphics will slow down the load time of the page and people will leave your site.

8. Constantly Monitor
It is very important to implement analytics and keep an eye on your campaign performance. Getting in the habit of monitoring key metrics will help identify problem areas quickly. Continuous improvement will improve your quality score, lower your campaign costs and increase conversions.

By: Matt McGee

Google has begun the rollout of its Social Search product, a way of seeing customized search results based upon the people in your social network. Social Search has been an opt-in Google Labs experiment since its debut in October, but will be available as a beta product in the “next few days” to all users on Google.com.

Our article on the initial debut, Google Social Search Launches, Gives Results From Your Trusted “Social Circle,” provides an in-depth guide to how Google Social Search, including:

• how to access Social Search (reminder: it’s under the “Show Options” link on the search results page)
• how it determines your social circle
• how it finds and presents content created by people in your social circle
• how it ranks the content it shows
• and more

With today’s rollout to Google.com, there are a couple interesting additions to Social Search since our previous coverage that deserve mention.

Read More

By MG Siegler

Today, at its Search Event in Mountain View, Google Fellow Amit Singhal (who recently participated in our Realtime Crunchup) took the stage to announce a big new feature for the search giant: Realtime.

“It’s Google’s relevance technology meeting the realtime web,” is how Singhal described it.

As we’ve learned over the past several months with Twitter Search, relevancy is perhaps the key to making realtime search a pillar of the web. Google seems to believe it has cracked the code for this, and has been internally testing it for a while now. But starting today it’s going live for everyone.

Singhal showed off the new feature by doing a query for “Obama.” The results page shows results coming in in realtime. And yes, it works with Twitter. For example, Google’s Matt Cutts tweeted something from the audience, and in popped in the results immediately. This is the first time any search engine has integrated realtime results into a standard page, Google says. Obviously, this is huge. Read More

By John Gaffney

Consolidation. Excitement. Game-changer. Dominance. Welcome to the Google-ized world of mobile advertising. As the rest of the world was watching the company’s expected court filing on its digital book case, Google stepped out and bought AdMob for $750 million in stock. In the process, the landscape for mobile marketing is different than the one that existed Monday morning.

“This is the kind of game-changing event I’ve been predicting for more than a year,” says Jordan Greene, principal of mobile advisory firm Mella Media. “The entry of Google in a dramatic fashion makes this a whole different ecosphere.”

The details: Google buys AdMob for $750 million in stock. According to Google, the company is getting AdMob at a critical early stage of its growth, after it has proven its viability and customer base. “Mobile advertising has enormous potential as a marketing medium and while this industry is still in the early stages of development, AdMob has already made exceptional progress in a very short time,” said Susan Wojcicki, Vice President of Product Management at Google. AdMob stakeholders get a considerable payday from a company that could have become a fierce competitor within a year or less. “Our goal all along at AdMob has been to make it possible for developers and publishers to bring their products and ideas to mobile with the same business model,” said Omar Hamoui, Founder and CEO of AdMob. “We’re proud of the progress we’ve made towards accomplishing this goal, and joining Google will only accelerate this process, ultimately leading to very real benefits for end users around the world. As publishers and developers generate more revenue from their mobile products, they will invest more, and their mobile offerings will become richer, more creative and more robust.”

The Google statement used the word “ecosystem” frequently. “The deal will help Google in its efforts to develop more effective tools for creating, serving and analyzing emerging mobile ads formats. As this ecosystem continues to grow, the company expects these new marketing media,” it said. It promised the new venture would help advertisers engage mobile users with AdMob’s ad formats, help publishers and developers monetize their content more effectively, and help users will see more relevant ads and ultimately get access to more ad-supported content and applications – improving their mobile experience.

Greene and other experts brought up several short-term ramifications of the deal. First and foremost, it creates a new 800 pound gorilla on the mobile ad block. That’s undeniable and changes the ad pitch of every other company in this space immediately. The other point mentioned frequently is viability. Greene believes some brands that were on the fence about mobile ads and budgets might be more comfortable ramping up now that Google is pushing the market.

“The announcement is causing tremendous excitement as it validates the enormous potential of mobile advertising. We predicted consolidation in the industry and Admob’s broad high volume business model is highly synergistic for Google. The industry front runner will be determined by who can deliver the most advanced targeting capabilities for better ROI for advertisers and publishers,” said Paran Johar, CMO of Jumptap, which will now have to compete with the AdMob/Google combination.

Here are some quick stats about facebook that should be interesting to business owners.

o Last month Facebook hit 300 million users
o An average of 250,000 new users join everyday
o About 34% work as professionals, sales, executives, educators or are in technical careers.
o The fastest growing demographic on Facebook consists of users 25 and older

If you decide to build a Facebook page for your business here are some tips that are important for establishing your Facebook presence.

Create a profile that is interesting

Upload a lot of photos.  Photos help fans connect with your company on an emotional level.  Your pictures can include your logo, pictures of your best selling products, company events, ads, employees, and etc.

Make sure your business description is unique and compelling.  A dull description may not appeal to many fans.  Stand out above your competition and other businesses.  Intrigue potential fans to want to become a fan of your business.

Add links, videos, and notes pages.  The more information you have listed the more appealing you will be to your fans and will increase the interaction on your page.

Continue to grow your fan base

You can start by befriending  people you know.  But keep these friends professional since this facebook page directly relates to your business.

Search on facebook to find more friends.  Facebook can help you find more friends through your existing email contacts.  Then search on keywords related to your business to find potential new friends that may be interested in your business.

Join groups that are related to your business.  You can do a Facebook search by industry, location and company name.  If there aren’t any groups in your industry start one.

Develop your presence

Join wall for forum discussions.  Comment on other walls.  This will help you establish your identity and visibility.

Make your wall interesting.  Update frequently with promotions, events, surveys or ask for feedback on your products or services.

Post comments/quetions on your wall that will get a discussion going with your fans.  For example “Who do you think will make it to the Super Bowl?”

Syndicate

Wherever possible link back to your website.  Sometimes your facebook page may get more views than your website so it’s important to link it back to your website whenever possible.

Link your Facebook page to other social networking sites like your Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Add a Facebook fan box to your website.  When people click on your fan book they will automatically become a fan without having to log in to Facebook

While doing my weekly search engine marketing readings I came across these best practices for ranking number one in the search engines by randfish from SEOmoz.

Ads Next’s unique solution practices these techniques to provide our clients with the greatest results and top organic rankings.

Best Practices for Ranking # 1

Curiously, though perhaps not entirely surprisingly to experienced SEOs, the truth is that on-page optimization doesn’t necessarily rank first in the quest for top rankings. In fact, a list that walks through the process of actually getting that first position would look something more like:

1. Accessibility – content engines can’t see or access cannot even be indexed; thus crawl-ability is foremost on this list.
2. Content – you need to have compelling, high quality material that not only attracts interest, but compels visitors to share the information. Virality of content is possibly the most important/valuable factor in the ranking equation because it will produce the highest link conversion rate (the ratio of those who visit to those who link after viewing).
3. Basic On-Page Elements – getting the keyword targeting right in the most important elements (titles, URLs, internal links) provides a big boost in the potential ability of a page to perform well.
4. User Experience – the usability, user interface and overall experience provided by a website strongly influences the links and citations it earns as well as the conversion rate and browse rate of the traffic that visits.
5. Marketing - I like to say that “great content is no substitute for great marketing.” A terrific marketing machine or powerful campaign has the power to attract far more links than content may “deserve,” and though this might seem unfair, it’s a principle on which all of capitalism has functioned for the last few hundred years. Spreading the word is often just as important (or more so) than being right, being honest or being valuable (just look at the political spectrum).
6. Advanced/Thorough On-Page Optimization – applying all of the above with careful attention to detail certainly isn’t useless, but it is, for better or worse, at the bottom of this list for a reason; in our experience, it doesn’t add as much value as the other techniques described.

By: searchengineland.com

From marketers to Wall Street analysts to the Department of Justice, everyone (even the general public) recognizes that Google is the 800-pound gorilla in the world of search. And particularly with the introduction of the generic 10-pack to Universal results, this fact largely holds true in Local Search as well. Google Maps has pulled even with Mapquest thanks largely to this decision by the higher-ups in Mountain View.

There’s tremendous value for small businesses in optimizing for Google’s Universal results, as Hanan Lifshitz pointed out last week. It’s hard not to imagine that small business owner grabbing the lion’s share of chiropractic searchers in his region, thanks to the efforts of Will Scott’s Search Influence firm.

But no matter your industry, when it comes to Local, it’s absolutely critical to think beyond Google, even if all you’re trying to do is optimize for the 10-pack.

The importance of citations for Google Maps

One of the pathways to “Local Organic Domination,” as Hanan termed it, is through the acquisition of citations. Citations are just mentions of your business name in close proximity to your address or phone number, with or without a link to your website. Think of them like votes of confidence for a particular business’slocation…the more confidence Google has in your listing, the higher they’re likely to display it in search results. So it’s important to list yourself fully and accurately in as many places across the web as possible, including blogs about your city or industry.

Bottom line, it’s hard to rank in Google Maps (and consequently Universal Search) without paying significant attention to how your business is listed across the web, not just on Google.

“Other” local search

One of Gib Olander’s favorite lines is: ” ‘other’ is the third-largest local search engine.” What he means is that local search is far more fragmented than traditional organic search. Unlike traditional search, if you’re only paying attention to getting your business on Google and Yahoo, you’re missing out on a huge chunk of local market share.

While the demise of the Print Yellow Pages seems imminent, Internet Yellow Pages sites are far healthier, and some are even thriving. YellowPages.com’s ad partnership with Bing is just one example…at least if Bing can continue to capitalize on its current hype. Superpages.com has long been a trusted source of data with its own steady traffic stream, and more recent entrants like InsiderPages and Yellowbot are starting to develop passionate user bases.

Then there’s the online classified market. Craigslist is the default place to look for local ’stuff” here on the West Coast, not to mention other major players like Oodle and Kijiji.

Vertical local search

Success in local also means promoting your presence on sites with strong market shares of their own in particular industries. This doesn’t mean only ranking well, but paying attention to what people are saying about you, responding to their feedback, and improving their perceptions.

For example, sites like TripAdvisor and Kayak are huge in the travel industry. Restauranteurs might even think about places like Yelp, BooRah, or Urban Spoon before thinking about Google. For chiropractors like Will’s client, these might include Planet Chiropractic and No More Clipboard. For searches near and dear to my heart, [golf courses] – it’s portals like Golf Digest and GolfNow.

(Incidentally, almost all of these sites make excellent citations for your Google Maps listing…)

Social local search

Many of the sites mentioned above, and even Google and Yahoo, straddle the line between social media and search due to the prominence of reviews in their users’ experience.  But local “searchers” are often turning to purely social sites like Twitter, Praized, and RetailMeNot as well for recommendations and sale information about Local businesses. And as we all learned from Dave Carroll’s brilliant lampoon of United Airlines last week, word-of-mouth can sometimes be more powerful than any search marketing campaign could be.

Conclusion

Local search traffic is only going to grow in importance.  So don’t “put your blinkers on” as Nick Faldo loves to say (indulge me…this is Open Championship week, after all) and focus all of your energies on Google. Your long-term chances for a successful online presence will suffer if you do.

I found this article interesting.  It’s a great article comparing Google and Microsoft.

By Ryan Singel  July 13  2009 

In less than a week, Google announced an operating system to compete with Windows, while Microsoft announced that Office 10 will include free, online versions of its four most popular software programs - a shot at Google’s suite of web-based office applications.

And not more than a month and a half ago, Microsoft unveiled its new search engine Bing which it hopes will steal market share from Google and finally make it real money online.

From the news of it, it’s a full-blown tech battle, complete with behind-the-scenes machinations to sic government regulators on each other.

It is, however, not a death match — it’s more of an fight to see who will be the King of Technology, since both companies pull in their billions through completely different siphons and are unlikely to severely wound one another any time soon.

Google pulled in $22 billion in revenue in 2008, 97 percent of which came tiny text ads bought by the keyword and placed next to search results or on pages around the web. Google makes a negligible amount of money bundling its online apps for businesses, charging $50 a head annually — but mostly it just gives its online text editor, email and spreadsheet programs away.

By contrast, Microsoft sold $14.3 billion worth of Microsoft Word and PowerPoint and other business applications over the last nine months, making a profit of $9.3 billion. It made a further $16 billion in revenue in 2008 through sales of its operating systems, which range from XP installations on netbooks, to Vista, to Windows Mobile to its server software.

Google now plans its own range of operating systems, starting with Android, an open-source OS for small devices like smartphones, and Chrome OS, a browser-focused, open-source OS that will run on notebooks and desktops.

Clearly top executives at each company look over at the others’ pots of gold and dream of ways to steal them, or at least make it harder for the other guy to make money. Read More