Some quick points:
1. A Tab will show up in “YSM later this month”, so be sure to login and look around.
2. Yours ads can server in adCenter right away when you transition.
3. Silverlight will continue being used. I still need to test and see what functionality might be missing when I login from my iPhone or an older mac. I hope whatever missing features degrade well!
4. The upcoming changes to organic search are later this month. We anticipate a rocky ride, as Microsoft will likely need to make ongoing tweaks.

Dear Advertiser,

As your transition to the Microsoft Advertising adCenter platform approaches, we have more details to share to help you prepare for the changes to come.

Considerations for your upcoming transition

adCenter account
Soon, you’ll need to either create a new adCenter account, or link an existing adCenter account to your Yahoo! Search Marketing account. Later this month, you’ll see an “adCenter” tab within your Yahoo! Search Marketing account. Clicking there will take you to the beginning of the account transition process, where we’ll walk you through the simple steps to create or link accounts.

Budgeting
Once you create your adCenter account, it will be active and your ads will be eligible to serve on Bing right away. As a result, you’ll be managing both your new adCenter account and your existing Yahoo! Search Marketing account in parallel until ad serving for Yahoo! traffic transitions to adCenter, so plan to budget accordingly.

Microsoft Silverlight
With Silverlight installed, you’ll be able to see and address key differences between your Yahoo! and adCenter accounts as you transition. Download Silverlight now.

Organic search transition
Yahoo! organic search results will be powered by Bing as early as late August. 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. For more details, check out this blog post.

As we’ve stated previously, our primary goal is to provide a quality transition experience for advertisers in the U.S. and Canada in 2010, while protecting the holiday season. However, please remember that as we continue to go through our series of checkpoints, if we conclude that it would improve the overall experience, we may choose to defer the transition to 2011.

We are committed to making this transition as seamless and beneficial for you as possible. We appreciate your business, and look forward to bringing you the benefits of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance.

Sincerely,
Your Partners in the Search Alliance, Yahoo! and Microsoft

Accessibility: Search Engine robots must be able to find your content. These reasons help the bots find your postings without a lot of muss or fuss.

1. Pinging
Most blog software sends out a “ping” when there is a new post. Instead of waiting for a search engine crawler to come across your site’s new content – either via a routine crawling or via a link – a notification is sent out to sites like pingomatic, technorati, and even google blog search. This notification tells the search engine robots to come and fetch some fresh (crunchy) content.

2. RSS feeds provide deep links to content
RSS Feeds are useful for so many, many things. They contain links to your latest postings, but also consider that they contain links right to the postings themselves. Even crawlers that aren’t that smart (you know who you are, little bots!) can figure out how to find a link in a list. That’s essentially all an RSS Feed is: A list of links in a predictable format. Hint: You subscribed to your feed in iGoogle, didn’t you?

3. Standard sitemap.xml provide deep links to content
If an RSS feed isn’t enough, use a sitemap.xml file to notify search engines about your site, including any new posts. A great thing about sitemap.xml files is that they can communicate additional information about a link, like how often a search engine robot should visit and what priority the page has in relation to your site.

4. Based on modern HTML design standards
Most blogging software was created or updated very recently, and doesn’t use outdated HTML methods like nested tables, frames, or other HTML methods that can cause a bot to pause.

Relevance: Once found, search engines must be able to see the importance of your content to your desired audience.

5. Fresh content, updated often
Nothing quite gets the attention of a search engine robot like fresh content. It encourages frequent repeat visits from both humans and robots alike!

6. Fresh comments, updated often
Of course, the blogosphere is a very social place. Googlebot is likely to come back often to posts that are evolving over time, with fresh new comments being added constantly.

7. Keyword Rich Categories, Tags, URLs
Invariably, some of your best keywords are likely to be used in the tags and categories on your blog. If you aren’t using keyword rich categories and tags, you really should be.

Popular: Google looks at what other sites link to your site, how important they are, and what anchortext is used.

8. RSS Feeds provide syndication
RSS Feeds can help your content and links get spread all around the internet. Provide an easy path to syndication for the possibility of links and, of course, human traffic.

9. Extra links from blog & RSS Feed directories
The first blog I ever started was for the possibility of a link from a blog directory. But RSS Feed directories exist too! Be sure to maximize the link possibilities by submitting to both.

10. Linking between bloggers / related sites
Blog rolls are links that blogger recommend to their audience. sometimes they have nice, descriptive text and even use XFN to explain relationships between bloggers. Some of your best human traffic can be attained through blogrolls.

11. Social bookmarking technologies built in
Blog posts are usually created with links directly to social bookmarking services like delicious.com, stumbleupon, and other social bookmarking sites. You’ve never made it easier for your audience to share your posting and give you a link!

12. Tagging / Categories with relevant words
Tags can create links to your blog by relevant pages on technorati and other blog search engines. These tag pages sometimes even have pagerank! They deliver keyword rich links and quality traffic.

13. Trackbacks (Conversations)
Trackbacks are conversations spanning several blogs. They are an excellent way to gain links (although often nofollowed these days), and traffic. Other blogs can be part of the conversation, thanks to the trackback system!

The first session, Search Engine Optimization, addresses increasing web site rankings in Google, Yahoo, and more. SEO is all about helping the search engines see and understand the content of your website. Search engines want to be successful in directing visitors to quality destinations, and SEO should be focused on connecting with the right visitors.

The second session focuses on targeting potential customers with PPC (Pay Per Click) and other advertising. It’s possible to waste enormous amounts of money on Pay Per Click advertising networks like Google AdWords. this session will show how to make your limited budget work most efficiently for your business.

The third session builds on the first two. The Solution Clinic is for businesses that already have a web site and want real time evaluation and solutions for their site. Bring your hosting information, and we might just be able to fix it on the spot!

The training is sponsored by Southeast Business Retention, Expansion, and Attraction. For more information or to register, call the SEBREA office at 719-336-1523.

1. Keyword research  / suggestion services
Services like WordTracker, KeywordDiscovery and even Google Suggest can give a great idea of the traffic surrounding certain keywords, as well as the variations of keywords a site should target.

2. Analytics / Statistics
If you currently have analytics or web visitor statistics on your website, it is very helpful to look at how existing customers have found your site. If you haven’t loaded Google Analytics, it is quite easy – and free!

3. Brainstorming / Asking customers
Great keywords can also be found, just be interviewing current customers with “How did you find us?” Even a quick glance at your business plan can lead you to a few new ideas on how prospective customers might find you.

4. Competitors
Competitor websites can be a treasure trove of keywords. Scan their source code for a keywords metatag, if present. Also look at the keywords in their page titles by searching google for:
site:competitor.com

These four methods should lead you to plenty of keywords for your next campaign.

Are you optimizing your greatest asset? Website content is an essential part of online success. Help search engines see the relevance of your pages, articles, press releases and more. Learn to identify and target ranking opportunities with titles, headings, bolding and additional techniques. Also, HTML can be used to communicate the relevance of your website and content to search engines. You don’t need to be an HTML whiz either!

Once you have the content, you must know how to maximize your search engine exposure. Find out how aggressive search engine submission may harm your ability to get into Google’s listings, as well as modern strategies on how to get your site indexed safely. Learn how to take an active role in getting pages indexed quickly in the major search engines as you add new content. Finally, links from other websites are an important source of traffic and search rankings. Several kinds of links will be discussed and you are sure to leave with new link building ideas!

5 reasons to attend!

• Translate the user experience to all online channels
• Learn about online measurement and analytics tools
• Use your SEM campaign to maximize your ROI
• Ensure you are paying for profitable clicks
• Discover 26 sources of links to target

BONUS! Free manual with registration

Hope to see you there!

Now look through the related queries for “Chocolate“. Go ahead – I’ll wait. It appears many of us are writing about chocolate and writing about mobile seo in the same places. I’m going to bet more people are writing about chocolate, and I don’t blame them:

Mobile SEO is the (sometimes thankless) task of making sure websites look good on all sorts of mobile devices, including handhelds, cell phones, zunes, and the new ipod touch(which is probably a “no brainer”). Few mobile seo simulators are available online, which means field testing. And then page tweaking. It can be a time consuming and arduous task. It’s best accompanied with plenty of chocolate.

Platform A is poised to be a powerhouse of ad distribution through tightly defined niches like mobile advertising, video ads, behavioral targeting, and more. AOL has noticed CPM advertising is requiring more than just selling a bundle of clicks. Internet Advertisers and search marketers are requiring more demographic information before purchasing CPM these days. Without the right targeting, return on investment for CPM can be difficult to track(or realize!).

But Platform A also has the breadth of distribution to compete with Google: Platform A already reaches more than 90% of the domestic online audience, according to comScore. It will be interesting to test the two internet ad networks side by side: Each will likely have their own flavor, but one is going to clearly emerge as the leader. The competition will be good, but I doubt Google will be toppled just yet.

1. Who is my target audience?
Too many websites try to be all things to all people. Instead, think of your most important visitors and design according to their tastes. They may or may not appreciate animation. They may be on dialup connections or they may be visiting the site via a cell phone. Knowing your website’s target audience is vital to the project, even before a web site design has been created.

2. What do I want them to do?
If the purpose of your website is to get prospective customers to call, be sure your phone number is prominently displayed. A link to the “Contact Us” page should also be prominently displayed. Other websites may want to capture email addresses or newsletter signups. Ecommerce websites want to make a sale. Whatever the objective, make it as easy as possible for your customers.

3. How will they get to my site?
With competition among websites growing daily, it’s important to plan how you will increase the visibility of your website. Will you blog? Or participate in forums? You might even use pay-per-click advertising on Google AdWords. There are many ways to bring targeted visitors to your website, but they won’t come just because you’ve launched a new website design. Plan ahead, and watch your website bring you new business!

4. How can I measure the project’s success?
Many smaller website owners do not measure their web site metrics or statistics. Without an idea of traffic patterns and popular keywords, it is difficult to tell if a new web site design is effective. Are web site visitors converting to leads? Is the web site generating sales? Only by measuring can you know for sure.

1. Use negative keywords
In the article, words like “cheap” and “free” were used as negative keywords to avoid showing ads to less affluent searchers. Every time you show an ad it’s like holding out a dollar bill for your searcher to snatch away. Be sure to get a prospective customer in return!

2. Refrain from using the content network
Google AdWords users expect that the content network will show ads in all the right places. In a perfect world, new customers would see your ad and keep you in mind for their next purchase. But it isn’t a perfect world(Don’t even get me started!). Consider:

- Visitors probably will not click. Content ads are like billboard ads. How often do you see a billboard and pull off of the highway to make an immediate purchase? It’s highly unlikely. Like the company in the article learned, “The return was never there.”

- Visitors who click your ad won’t buy that day. They were reading, not shopping. At best, they will signup for your newsletter or bookmark your page. Is the landing page converting them into bookmarking or signing up? Probably not. Either fix that, or turn off the content network for now.

- Clickfraudsters will click your ad and keep half. Click fraud is a plague of the content network. Last June, Outsell estimated that click fraud could be as high as 14 percent. The real estimate is probably a little lower, but click fraud does exist.

3. Use large sets of focused keywords
The successful Lake Champlain Chocolate seller had a keyword set as high as 70k at one time, and now has it trimmed down to 30k. That’s  a big keyword set!

4. Use advanced keyword features
One of the issues Internet Marketing Consultant Lael Sturm found with the struggling Emerville Chocolate Retailer Charles Chocolates was that they “hadn’t modified the ad text to match each specific keyword.” Be sure to use the advanced keyword options that PPC engines like Google AdWords provide. In Google AdWords, the code is {keyword: your keyword}. This option shows the keyphrase your user was searching for in the text of your ad.

5. Measure and adjust
Is money being wasted in your campaign? You won’t know unless you are measuring. Lake Champlain saw they spent money attracting a searcher for “Chocolate covered scorpions,” something they didn’t sell, and decided not to let that happen again. Along with measuring what ads are the most effective, be sure to measure what you are paying for and remove/adjust the ads lacking good ROI.

6. Outsource your campaign to professionals to dramatically increase your sales
Even with Lake Champlain Chocolate’s success inhouse, they were able to DOUBLE their sales by outsourcing their PPC management to professionals. You just can’t beat having the right help. Get to your friendly neighborhood search marketing agency today!

Secondly, I’ll probably read through it twice. Might as well have a fresh crisp copy the second time. I wonder if I’ll even dog-ear the same pages?

Here are four excellent resources for anyone interested in SEO, internet marketing, ecommerce, and the affiliate scene:
1. Search Marketing Standard. If you’ve thought the SEO world moves too fast for print, think again.

2. Practical Ecommerce. Not just for ecommerce store owners. Every web developer creating ecommerce websites should be in tune with the industry.

3. Revenue. Great for affiliate marketers, ecommerce merchants, or any company creating PPC(Pay Per Click) campaigns on Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing.
4. Internet Retailer. Especially important if you are helping larger companies with their SEO, SEM, PPC, and ROI! This publication is best at industry trends influencing larger retailers and online merchants.

It is essential that web designers and web site developers start paying attention to the many facets that can make or break an online business. These publications can help get you serve your clients!