To date, we’ve focused most of our communications to you on the paid search transition to adCenter. However, another key aspect of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is the transition of Yahoo! organic search results (those found on the main body of the page). Assuming our testing continues to yield high quality results, we anticipate that our organic search results will be powered by Bing beginning in the August/September timeframe.

If organic search results are an important source of referrals to your website, you’ll want to make sure that you’re prepared for this change:

Both Yahoo! Sites and Microsoft Sites have experienced gains due in part to the continued utilization of contextual search approaches that tie content and related search results together. [...]

Google Sites accounted for 10.3 billion searches (up 1 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.1 billion (up 7 percent), Microsoft Sites with 2.1 billion (up 8 percent), Ask Network with 584 million (up 1 percent), and AOL LLC with 368 million (up 2 percent).”

If your company doesn’t have a blog, you have even more motivation to start one right now. Hubspot states that businesses with corporate blogs generate 67 percent more leads than non-blog websites.

Why is this? Search Engine Optimization. The more content on your business site, the better chances of being found by people searching for your products or services. The quality of the blog posts are critical to the process. The use of keywords in titles and content, and generating back links to the company blog plays a significant role in search engine rankings.

Contact DoubleDome Web Technologies if you would like to set up a corporate blog or search engine optimization campaign.

To build a successful site map, use the following steps:

1. Make a list of each page on your your website and its URL.
2. Assign each of the pages a priority ranking, which is a number between zero and one.
3. Make a note of when each page was last updated.
4. Assign an update frequency for each page. This could be daily, weekly, etc.

Once you have this information for your site, you are prepared to put together the site map file for your website. If you have created your website using a content management system, there is probably a site map generator plug-in that you can use to automatically generate this file for you. If not, consider using a professional web design firm to assist you with this project.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s your website and your content that are going to be on display and no one knows better than you which items are most important. That’s why it is critical to spend some serious time organizing your website content in advance. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it should be as complete as possible. It will ensure that your web designers have a clear picture of what you want to say before they begin work. This will allow them to structure the web design in a manner that is best suited to getting your message across. When websites are built in this manner, everyone wins: the client as well as the web design company.

Google is very clear about paid links. They don’t like them. Google even has an official form that enables webmasters to report paid links to Google:

“Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it.

Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site’s value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.”

Google has released an official statement about poor inbound links

Last month, Google published an official statement about low quality links in their webmaster blog. Here are the main statements:

• Linking is a significant factor in Google’s ranking algorithm but it is just one of many factors. Other factors are the content of your web pages, the site structure and the appearance of a keyword in the different web page elements.
• If you have a high quality website and get links from spammy websites, try to contact the website owners and ask them to remove their links. Google will not help you with that.
• It the webmasters of the spammy website are not cooperative, don’t worry and focus on the links that are under your control.
• Google recommends to optimize the many factors than influence indexing and ranking. The top 10 optimizer in our website optimization tool has been designed for exactly that task.
• It analyzes dozens of factors that influence the position of your website in the search results and it shows you what exactly you have to change so that Google will list your website on the first result page.
• Google says that low-quality links rarely stand the test of time and that they may not be considered by Google’s ranking algorithm.
• If you want to make sure Google knows about the spammy links and is valuing them appropriately, you can report them to Google with their spam report or paid links report forms.

2. Branding – Every message should incorporate your brand in some way. It can range from the complex, like videos and Flash, to the utterly simple, like a custom logo, customized signature or slogan. The point is, you want each email to be immediately associated with the sender.

3. Call To Action – Every message, no matter its content, must guide a user towards a specific action. If you’re sending a product announcement email, provide a link to a pre-populated shopping cart and a FAQ page. If you’re soliciting feedback, provide a link to a form, or other places to connect with the brand like your Twitter account or Facebook page. In all cases, make your call to action prominent. Tell the reader what you want them to do early and often. Once users become accustomed to your email as a portal for interaction and education, they will be much more likely to read it and respond.

The effect of the Yahoo/Microsoft deal on your website

You’ve probably heard about the Yahoo/Microsoft deal. This will have a major impact on the search engine landscape and there definitely will be effects on your website rankings and the number of visitors that your website will get.

The basic facts

Yahoo is going to give up their own search technology and use Microsoft’s search technology instead. Bing.com will power the organic and the paid search results on Yahoo (except for premium ads on Yahoo). Self-serve advertising (i.e. the AdWords competitor) will be managed by Microsoft’s AdCenter. Microsoft will get access to Yahoo’s search technology and can use it to improve its own search technology.

What does this mean for your website?

1. You should optimize for Bing.com.??Yahoo/Bing will have a search market share of at least 15% (that’s the current market share of MSN and Yahoo combined – some statistics show a much higher market share).??If you do not optimize some of your website pages for Bing, you’ll lose a lot of visitors and sales. Fortunately, IBP’s top 10 optimizer already enables you to optimize your website for Bing.??The optimizer works with the US version of Bing as well as with many country versions. Recent research has shown that Bing’s traffic is more likely to convert.

2. Yahoo’s inbound link data will probably be lost.??Yahoo is the search engine that currently returns the most inbound link data. When Yahoo drops its index, that data will probably be lost. We recommend using IBP’s link manager if you want to get an overview of the websites that link to your website.??The link manager in IBP will retrieve all links that are returned by Yahoo, Bing, Google and other search engines.

3. A big PPC provider will be gone, an even bigger provider will appear.??Microsoft will provide the search ads for Yahoo and Bing. Yahoo will close its own paid search offerings. That means that you will be able to manage your ads for both Yahoo and Bing in one user interface. It probably also means rising bid prices on Yahoo and Bing.

4. Yahoo might close some of their websites.??Yahoo might put its Internet directory into question as well as their alternative search applications SearchMonkey and SearchBOSS. Applications such as Yahoo Maps might also be reconsidered because Bing offers similar services.

5. There will be two independent search result pages.??Yahoo will have full control over the user interface of their search form. The ordering of the results, the layout and the whole search focus can be different from Bing. That means that you still might have to optimize your website for both search engines.

2. The overall industry average click fraud rate in Q2 was 12.7%. That’s down from 13.8% for Q1 2009 and from the 16.2% rate reported for Q2 2008. (source: ClickForensics)Click fraud is a type of Internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad’s link.

3. The paid clicks in Q2/2009 were up 15 percent year-over-year, but down 2 percent from the first quarter. (source: Google Q2/2009 earnings summary)

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We are busy working on our improved crawler and plan to ramp up its workload as we move toward the goal of putting it into full production. As a result, webmasters may begin seeing an increased amount of traffic from the new bot on their sites.

NEW YORK U.S. retail e-commerce sales (excluding travel) will total nearly $132 billion in 2009, down about 0.4 percent from 2008. Assuming the recession ends this year, as many economists have predicted, eMarketer forecasts that online sales will begin to rebound in 2010 and hit full stride in 2011.

Web research has become a priority for value shoppers in today’s recession. Currently, 86 percent of Web users are shoppers who browse, research and compare products on the Internet, but they do not necessarily buy online. Often ignored, store sales influenced by online research are three times higher than e-commerce sales.

Many consumers opt to buy online for convenience, price and broad product selection. About 81 percent of Web shoppers are also online buyers. Web consumers who refrain from buying online often get hung up on security and privacy concerns or the inability to touch and feel products. Web retailers are adding new content and features to lower these hurdles.

Google specifies the position of a website in its search results by on-page factors and off-page factors. On-page factors are all factors that can be found on your web pages:

Did you optimize the web page for the targeted keyword?
Can search engines find all pages of your website through the links on your website?
Is the HTML code of your web pages error free so that search engine spiders can easily parse your pages?
Does your robots.txt file allow search engine spiders to visit your web pages?
Are your web pages free of all spam elements (no hidden text, no sneaky redirects, no keyword stuffing, cloaking, etc.?
Off-page factors are the factors that cannot be found on your web pages:

How many websites link to your site?
Are these links from related high quality pages?
Do social bookmark websites link to your site?
Do the links to your website include the keywords for which you want to be ranked highly?

82% of search engine users will re-launch their search using the same search engine as they used for their initial search, but add more keywords to refine their subsequent search.

This finding also points to the wish of marketers to not only target a few short, broad terms with their search engine optimization campaigns, but also an abundance of longer, more specific keyword phrases being queried when users are dissatisfied with the results of their initial searches.

These keywords often produce more qualified traffic and higher conversion rates.

This multitude of ultra-specific keywords that generate little traffic and few conversions each, but significant numbers of both collectively, is often referred to as the long tail. (source: iProspect)

EMarketer estimates mobile Internet access, through either traditional browsers or installed applications, will see significant gains during the next five years, reaching 134.3 million U.S. mobile Internet users in 2013. That’s up from 73.7 million in 2009. Many historic barriers to mobile Internet usage — cost, complexity and poor user experience — have begun to recede. For many marketers, mobile applications constitute an increasingly necessary avenue for reaching and engaging with their customers, but the essential challenge remains: To understand consumer behavior and craft experiences that resonate with a target audience and integrate with other channels.

The recession has hit the retail industry from all angles. U.S. retail e-commerce sales will shrink from $133.6 billion in 2008 to $133.1 billion in 2009. EMarketer estimates online sales will be relatively flat in 2009, with some signs of recovery beginning in 2010. As disappointing as sales were online, offline figures were even more lackluster in 2008. Sales shrank 0.6% for the year and each quarter showed less growth than in the e-commerce channel. Affluent online buyers were a major reason e-commerce sales fared better than retail industry sales. Affluent Internet users are more active than ever, on PCs and mobile devices, and their numbers continue to grow, even in a severe recession.

Increase efficiency with CSV import.

Many advertisers have requested the ability to import CSV files in AdWords Editor, and we’re happy to announce this feature is now available in the new versionwe’re happy to announce this new feature. If you make changes to your account in a spreadsheet or a custom application, you can now import your spreadsheet directly into AdWords Editor, then post your new or edited items. Learn more

Save time by downloading or updating selected campaigns.

Have you ever waited a long time for your account to download, when all you want to do is work with one or two campaigns? Now you can just download the campaign (or campaigns) that you want to edit, leaving the rest of the account alone. You may also choose to download or update only active campaigns (or only paused campaigns). Learn more

Make the most of Keyword Opportunities.
We’ve made a few changes to the Keyword Opportunities tool that should make it easier to manage your keyword data. On the “Search-based keywords” tab (the AdWords Editor version of the Search-based Keyword Tool) you can now view and organize new keywords by topical category, letting you zero in quickly on the keywords that are most relevant to your account. Also, when you export or copy keywords, the Keyword Opportunities columns (such as Volume and Competition) are now included. As another response to advertisers’ requests, you can now add terms to your account as either keywords, negative keywords, or campaign negative keywords.

• Bing shows a preview of the web pages in the search results when you hover your mouse pointer at the right side of the search results.
• Bing displays fewer results if it is certain that it has understood your intent. The search for “Facebook”, for example, brings up just one result linking to the site itself.
• Some search results are divided into categories. For example, if you search for the popular musician “Justin Timberlake”, you’ll get results in the categories news, songs, movies, biography, wallpaper and downloads. In addition, the search results show images, videos and the popularity of the musician.
• Wikipedia searches can be displayed inline in the search results without leaving the Bing site by clicking the “Enhanced view” link.
• Bing features a different background image every day. The image contains special hidden hotspots that lead you to more information (soon advertising?) about the image.
• Despite the background image, Bing’s homepage loads very quickly in your web browser because the search box and logo load first. You can turn off the background image.
• Bing’s video search lets you watch videos without leaving the search engine.
• Bing offers specific health, shopping and travel search engines, as well as instant answers to travel searches. For instance, the search “Vegas hotels” displays a selection of hotels in Las Vegas, including hotel stars and prices.
• Bing’s search history lets you return to your most recent searches of the last two days. This feature can be turned off to protect your privacy.
• Some of Google’s features are missing, for example, Bing doesn’t seem to recognize misspellings and returns no results in these cases.

Based on Google’s analysis of the data it collects across its network of online services, including Google Search and Google Maps, a pizzeria for instance could find out how many people are clicking on its store hours, or which zip code is the most common among diners seeking driving directions.

The product is free, and is intended to showcase the usefulness of online data analysis to local businesses, many of whom may not even have their own Web site, said Carter Maslan, director of product management for local search.

Does Google expect that any of those newly-enlightened customers could then decide to advertise through Google’s Internet search system?

Integrated marketing is an approach that relies on consistency and systematic strategy.? It is important to establish consistent images, content, and tone as you create and deliver marketing messages and materials.? A brand can generate greater sustainability over time by doing this.? Establishing consistency between various media and points of distribution will really pay off in the long run.? Aside from a company’s web design and presence on the internet, there are also other media outlets to address.? Print, radio, and television campaigns are very effective for marketing.? However, the effectiveness of all these campaigns depends largely on the integration of each element.

A professional web design company can help in this regard.? You see, it is all about getting the lion’s share while dealing with fewer metrics on performance and lowering overall costs.? Most companies have limited budgets, and that means there is a need to focus on the expenditure of dollars and other resources.? When you create an integrated marketing campaign, the results multiply.? It is possible to set up an outreach strategy that benefits from past messages and builds on that momentum for new marketing messages.

Once of the most prominent examples of this concept is logo design.? Think about some of the most powerful and lasting logos out there.? McDonald’s and Pepsi come to mind as iconic logos that have stood the test of time.? Consistency and long term application is important for a brand logo.? Skillful design sets the foundation.? A web design firm can work to integrate logos for all forms of media.? Developing a sleek logo that can be used in various marketing settings is crucial.? The same is true for other design details.? Marketing materials must flow together across different types of media.? You get better results when you project the same tone and message in your web, print, radio, and TV campaigns.? This is how you build brand recognition and establish a positive image.

Technorati Profile

The company on Wednesday will begin testing a new social-networking platform called Microsoft Vine, and chief strategist Craig Mundie tells Fortune the company is planning on pursuing a subscription-based model instead of trying to support the platform only with advertising. Vine’s other twist: It plans to target public safety officials and concerned citizens seeking emergency information.

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1. Google has increased the snippet length.

Google now shows an extended snippet for queries that consist of three or more keywords. The idea behind this change is that these multi-word queries are very targeted and complex. The usual short snippet might not contain enough information.

2. Google now shows more related searches at the bottom of the results

When you search for a keyword, Google will display related searches at the bottom (and sometimes at the top) of the search results.

For example, if you search for the keyword “principles of physics”, Google will suggest “angular momentum,” “special relativity,” “big bang” and “quantum mechanic” as related terms that could help you find what you need.

3. Google now shows local results based on IP addresses

Search Google for the keyword “pizza” and you’ll see local results in the middle of the search results. These local results are delivered based on the IP address of the searcher. That means that you will get different results than people in another city.

The keywords in the links to a website have been so important for Google that people managed to get websites to the top of Google’s search results for very obscure keywords. For example, some people started a scheme in which they asked their friends to link to the official website of George W. Bush with the keyword “miserable failure”.

The result was that George W. Bush’s website was #1 on Google for that keyword. In the meantime, Google has learned to deal with these so-called Google bombs and it’s not as easy to manipulate the results with the links as it has been.

A Gartner study released last week said in the 12 months ended September 2008, more than 5 million U.S. consumers — 40% more than in the same period a year ago — lost money to phishing attacks. These well-publicized e-mail scams have made consumers wary of opening commercial e-mails. And perhaps no one feels the pain more than financial services companies, a prime target of scammers.

The OTA study said the overwhelming majority of Fortune 500 brands, including huge marketers such as AT&T, Procter & Gamble, Sears and MetLife, have not taken the two key steps to reinforcing online security: implementing website-security certificates and authenticate e-mails sent from their corporate domains.

What does that mean? E-mail authentication means a marketer provides information — digital signatures, IP addresses or domain names from which legitimate e-mails will come — to the ISPs, such as Earthlink or Comcast, or e-mail vendors, such as Yahoo or AOL, that helps them determine that this is truly from the company it claims be from. For example, XYZ company can declare to the ISP that it only sends e-mails from the domain www.bigbookseller.com. Thus, if the ISP sees e-mails purporting to come from XYZ but that are sent from any other domain, it should block them.

OTA Chairman Craig Spiezle said third-party e-mail marketers are adopting authentication at a rate of 85%, but brands themselves are not protecting their corporate domain names. That means third-party vendors sending e-mails on their client’s behalf often authenticate the domain they have set up to control the campaign. For example, an e-mail marketer sending promotional e-mails on behalf of XYZ might use the authenticated e.bigbookseller.com domain, but bigbookseller.com itself is not authenticated. Thus, it becomes easy for someone to forge e-mail that appears to be coming from bigbookseller.com.