PPC Management, SEO Consulting, & all things Internet Marketing

BING SEARCH FRAUD- CHEATERS NEVER WIN

2010-04-23T08:59:00.000-07:00

I've noticed something very suspicious lately when using my Internet Explorer browser. Whenever you directly type a website name into the browser, you don't get to the website directly. What I see is a Bing search engine query result page with the website of course appearing in its organic results.

Not a big deal you say? Its pretty insidious actually. I believe by doing this, Microsoft is inflating its Bing search traffic statistics. Bing is in running in about a distant 3rd place behind Google and Yahoo for search traffic marketshare- That means a lot of revenue potential for Microsoft.

Read more about Microsoft's Bing marketshare news here:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/194852/bing_loses_more_money_as_microsoft_chases_google.html

What is more interesting, and perhaps not surprising is how Microsoft is blatantly and fraudulently trying to make up ground in this critical area.

Nielsen reports more than 9.17 billion searches in February 2010, with Google Search accounting for 65.2 percent of the market share with a total of 5.98 billion searches. Yahoo came in second with 14.1 percent, with a total 1.29 billion searches. Bing is 3rd place with 12.5 percent. AOL accounted for 2.3 percent. Can we believe these figures?

Query "bing fraud" and millions of topics result for that query. Unfortunately for Microsoft, this isn't the first time its accused of unethical business actions.

What this means for businesses employing Internet marketing, and especially Pay-Per-Click and Search Engine Marketing is to stick with Google (and Yahoo to a lesser degree, especially with recent questions surrounding a partnership between Bing and Yahoo). For small business, Google is the only search engine you need to effectively worry about. For larger companies who insist on using many search engines which include lower quality sites like Bing, safeguards must be employed to protect against fraud. Experienced agencies like http://www.49er-consulting.com/ employ best practices to limit fraud exposure across all search engines, even Google.

Tiger Woods and Image Marketing

2009-12-18T13:26:00.000-08:00

Read about our Tiger Woods and Accenture posting here.

49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:

ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0

For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com

PPC Management Montclair NJ

2009-09-08T09:13:00.000-07:00

49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ based PPC Management agency. We have clients nationwide, not just NJ or the metro NYC area!

Where is Montclair, NJ? It is about a 30 minute drive west of Manhattan, NY.

Montclair is centered pretty well among the of Route 80, Route 280, Route 21, Route 46, Route 3, Route 19, and the Garden State Parkway.

The closest exit to Montclair, NJ off the Garden State Parkway is Exit 151.

I prefer Google Maps to Mapquest. It's not so heavy with ad serving, therefore it loads much faster.

Surrounding towns in which our business serves include:

Verona, NJ
Bloomfield, NJ
Cedar Grove, NJ
Caldwell, NJ
West Caldwell, NJ
Nutley, NJ
Belleville, NJ
Clifton, NJ
Passaic, NJ
West Orange, NJ
Orange, NJ
East Orange, NJ
South Orange, NJ
Essex Fells, NJ
Roseland, NJ
Livingston, NJ
Fairfield, NJ
Totowa, NJ
Paterson, NJ
Elmwood Park, NJ
Garfield, NJ
Hasbrouck Heights, NJ
Wood-Ridge, NJ
Moonachie, NJ
Carlstadt, NJ
Rutherford, NJ
Lyndhurst, NJ
North Arlington, NJ

Complete Tags list:
PPC Management Montclair NJ, PPC Management Verona NJ, PPC Management Bloomfield NJ, PPC Management Cedar Grove NJ, PPC Management Caldwell NJ, PPC Management West Caldwell NJ, PPC Management Nutley NJ, PPC Management Belleville NJ, PPC Management Clifton NJ, PPC Management Passaic NJ, PPC Management West Orange NJ, PPC Management Orange NJ, PPC Management East Orange NJ, PPC Management South Orange NJ, PPC Management Essex Fells NJ, PPC Management Roseland NJ, PPC Management Livingston NJ, PPC Management Fairfield NJ, PPC Management Totowa NJ, PPC Management Paterson NJ, PPC Management Elmwood Park NJ, PPC Management Garfield NJ, PPC Management Hasbrouck Heights NJ, PPC Management Wood-Ridge NJ, PPC Management Moonachie NJ, PPC Management Carlstadt NJ, PPC Management Rutherford NJ, PPC Management Lyndhurst NJ, PPC Management North Arlington NJ

49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:

ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0

For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com

It's all About CPA not PPC!

2009-09-04T10:58:00.000-07:00

Can you see the forest, or do you just see the tree?

Today's topic on PPC Management is a very important one. It has to do with educating a client's perspective of expectations and business strategy.

So many times I get calls from prospective clients who can't figure out their PPC Advertising accounts. And of course that's why they call on me. They think I can wave my magical wand, go into their PPC accounts and instantly fix everything.

I got a call today from a local Montclair, NJ business needing help with their PPC account. Their ROI was about -15% on a consistent basis. They tried a bunch of things including buying expensive bid management software. They depend on PPC advertising for all their revenue volume!

The best PPC Management consultants will always preach the caveat that you must not rely on any one marketing channel for success. Doing so is like depending on one kind of investment stock for your retirement. It's too risky.

What I recommended the business owner do, is:

Identify and limit his PPC keywords to only the most profitable or nearly break-even.
Optimize his landing pages better so that their quality scores improve, and deliver on the promise of his text ads more consistently.
More importantly, he needs to start thinking about other means of customer acquisition.

CPA in Internet marketing stands for Cost Per Acquisition. PPC advertising "gone wild" has yielded this client an expensive CPA. He is not aware of other successful means of Customer Acquisition.

PPC Advertising, of course is one of the more popular means of Customer Acquisition out there. It brings relevant ads to customers who are actively interested in a product or service. The main disadvantages are, you are paying for clicks, and not guaranteed sales. Plus, PPC advertisers have to manage click fraud, and inconsistent results.

I recommended these other simple strategies to look into to lower his overall CPA:

Fixed-price banner ads
Affiliate marketing

Banner ads, when placed well, can contribute very well to a business's lead mix. On one client I recently worked for, well-placed banner ads were contributing approximately 30% to their lead volume. That's a very respectable number. Plus, banners can extend your brand image in ways your PPC text ads cannot.

Affiliate marketing is basically sharing your profit with referrers who bring you closed transactions. It's a deep topic, but successful campaigns involve good tracking methods, metrics, and an accounting system to pay your virtual salespeople. Think about it. Wouldn't you rather pay for customers, and not clicks?

There are many other ways to lower a company's CPA. PPC advertising, while enormously popular, can be very risky to many businesses, even the largest ones with deep pockets. The key is to manage your expectations, limit your keywords, and broaden your marketing strategy. Your business will be healthier for it!

49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:

ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0

For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com

Today's PPC Management Tip

2009-09-02T06:50:00.000-07:00

PPC ADVERTISING MANAGEMENT TIP #12

Slow and steady PPC bid management wins the race.

One of the rookie mistakes you will encounter is trying to interpret Traffic and Rank Estimator (TRE) tools that are built into search engine PPC accounts, like Google.

You are curious to know what the costs are for what position ranks. So you try adjusting your bid downward by 15 cents or more, and then immediately re-click the TRE. You see the rank output doesn't change, so you keep adjusting downward. You are thinking to yourself, "Wow, our recent optimization work to our website is really paying off!"

That's not the case.

You check in the next day to see how your conversions are doing, and the numbers have generally fallen off across the board.

Unfortunately, Google is not in the business of revealing to you what keywords will precisely cost for what ranks at any given moment. Part of that assumption is a technical difficulty, and the other part of that is understanding that Google cannot reveal to you on a business level what your competition is bidding. That is generally why search engines like Google will only show you rough, unchanging estimations. In spite of this, there are ways to give you a very good idea about what your competition is paying. But that is a topic for another day.

In short, once you get a feel for what general ranks cost on a consistent basis, do not try adjusting your bids by more than 10 cents at a time. Once you do make bid changes, you should really resist trying to manipulate bids on a daily basis. You have to stand back and let your PPC account accrue data over a period of time.

That's right- in professional PPC management, less is more.

49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:

ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0

For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com

Why you shouldn't be Bidding on Keywords that are Core to your Business (I know, theoretically)

2009-08-27T21:56:00.000-07:00

One of the concerning trends I see in PPC management is, companies are spending on PPC ads based upon the core keywords of their business.

This is a point of debate in PPC management.

Good use of PPC advertising means you should not have to spend money bidding on keywords for your core products and services. Yes, I know that's theory. And yes, so many companies throw money at their problems in the form of PPC advertising. Their problems being relatively poor SEO value for their websites. Your natural SEO value of your website should already be giving you visibility in that regard.

Granted, many industries are very competitive, and your SEO value alone may not give you enough visibility at the moment. So what do companies do? They bid on keywords they really shouldn't have to. And that's precisely why so many companies find it expensive to compete for PPC bidding.

No wonder why so many companies claim they are not hitting their ROIs. It is also the reason why I believe Google has a great deal of customer turnover, despite their success.

The better approach may be to invest that capital into SEO, viral content, marketing/seasonal promotions, and social media for your website. This is not an overnight endeavor. It will take months of consistent labor. But the payoff is substantial and long-lasting.

49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:

ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0

For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com

"Do I need PPC Advertising for my Business?"

2009-08-27T21:42:00.000-07:00

I got that question today from one prospective client.

I recommend you do because

1) Search engine algorithms can change. So if you are enjoying high organic visibility now, your PPC advertising will buffer your drop in visibility if that happens.
2) PPC ad spending reinforces to the search engines what keywords are most important to your business, even if your website SEO value is poor. Search engines like Google ultimately want to make their ad-spending customers happy.

PPC advertising can extend your company brand, and go beyond the marketing reach of your core products and services. For example, let's say your company sells dog shampoo. Bidding on related dog activity keywords might pay off. For example, you may want to bid on "dog hair brush" or "dog grooming tips."

These are keywords that are not exactly related to dog shampoo. But someone may be interested in buying your dog shampoo product. PPC advertising allows you to go after this traffic.

49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:

ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0

For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com

Save $49.49 off your First Month!

2009-08-26T20:08:00.000-07:00

Now, through the end of the year, you can save $49.49 off your First Monthly Due. Find the Google Local Ads Coupon here, and just follow the instructions.

49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:

ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0

For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com

Invest or Borrow Capital. Peer to Peer Lending with Lendingclub.com

2009-08-25T12:34:00.000-07:00

Want to borrow up to $25K at rates much less than credit cards?
Or...
Want to earn 7-9% APY or more on your money as an investor?

Check out lendingclub.com and please use my referral code when registering:

club_lender

By putting in the above referral code, you earn a Free $25 as an investor. You don't get a bonus as an approved borrower with the referral code (lendingclub needs to work on that). But if you sign up properly using the referral code, and post a comment on my blog, I may invest $25 in your loan request. I can't guarantee that I will invest because you might look like a risky borrower :p.

Ever since prosper.com shut down, I've been having difficulty earning good returns on my money. As of the time of this writing, most major Internet money market accounts like emigrantdirect.com, ingdirect.com, and amtrustdirect.com pay less than 2% APY. Stocks are a nightmare, and government debt (treasuries, I-bonds) are a joke.

But the latest and most stable competitor to prosper.com seems to be lendingclub.com.

It's nice to see their CEO, Renaud Leplanche get a plug in this month's Businessweek.

The owner of this blog assumes no risk of loss in investing by referring lendingclub.com. All trademarks are owned by their respective companies and have no associations with 49er-consulting.com or the owner of this blog.

49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:

ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0

For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com

Yes, we are in Montclair NJ, and Yes, we do business nationwide!

2009-08-25T09:46:00.000-07:00

Where else would I rather work as an SEM professional? Montclair, NJ is situated very well because of their bus AND train station service into NYC. On a day with low traffic, I can commute into NYC by car or train in about 30 minutes. Montclair is known for many things, from their upscale and various restaurants, to their beautiful homes and schools, including Montclair State University.

At the moment, we are based on Park Street, and Christopher Street, Montclair NJ 07042 for all your ppc management and seo consulting needs. We're a small business ourselves, so we are transitioning to the right-sized commercial space at the moment.

That's all for today!

49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:

ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0

For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com

Today's PPC Management Tip

2009-08-24T18:35:00.000-07:00

PPC ADVERTISING MANAGEMENT TIP #34

Spending a lot of time on your PPC bid management platform won't fix things.

It's tempting for professional ppc managers to spend too much time on their ppc accounts where you are inundated with the granular details and metrics. Throw in text ad management, A/B testing, and other controls, and it's easy to see how your time flies.

From an agency perspective, we speak with many new clients who expect us to go into their ppc accounts
and somehow fix things. "Fixing things" don't begin or end spending alot of time there. Furthermore, if your
business model, website, company culture, or marketing plan has issues, that will in fact complicate arriving
at improving your metrics.

If your conversion rates or other metrics aren't hitting your targets, you need to be spending time improving
the following (but not limited to):

Business model (limitations of pricing, value, delivery, fulfillment, etc.)
Website (SEO, content, usability, flow, convention, etc.)
Company culture (many times, the client's IT department don't cooperate, or isn't as agile as their marketing department needs them to be)
Marketing plan (is another marketing channel lacking or not pulling it's weight? it may be indirectly dragging down your metrics)

49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management
and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and
rapidly growing companies. It's services include but are not limited to:

ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing
web 2.0

For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com

More Companies Blocking Social Networking Sites

2009-08-22T17:45:00.000-07:00

Scansafe, a web security solutions provider, reports a trend among its business clients: That more of them are deciding to block social networking websites.

If you examine this report, productivity is sited numerous times as the main reason to block employee access to sites.

Some other reasons Scansafe reports for this finding is that many social networking sites have malware, and pornography associated with them.

According to Scansafe, these are categories their customers are choosing to block:

76% social networking
75% weapons
64% alcohol
58% webmail
52% online shopping
51% sports
47% online banking

This only affirms what I've know for a long time in Internet marketing. As a business, you really do have to be very careful about using social networking properties to promote your business. You have to choose your social networking applications carefully. You can't take the quantity approach of trying them all and seeing what sticks. Your business brand is too valuable.

If it's true that major companies are sensing that frequenting social networking sites lead to unproductive behavior, and it's also true that social networks like twitter are still struggling to monetize their business models, then it's my opinion we should slow down on our mad rush onto the bandwagon of social networking for commercial purposes.

When choosing to use social networking applications to promote your business, try using the services of experienced agency help, like 49er-consulting.com. 49er-consulting has pricing just for small businesses are very experienced in the right social networking tools for you.

Consider hiring an experienced PPC management agency that caters to small businesses, works on low fees, and is well-versed on a wide array of Internet marketing tactics. 49er-consulting.com is one such agency based in NJ, but does business nationwide.

49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and rapidly growing companies.

It's services include but are not limited to:

ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing web 2.0

For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com

The Truth about PPC Advertising

2009-08-12T13:42:00.000-07:00

...Is that it may be a losing proposition(!).

Kind of ironic coming from a PPC consultant like myself?

Consider the following:

1) Your competition grows in quantity and quality. This makes your eventual PPC costs ultimately more and more expensive.

2) Your competition uses tools to figure out what your bid is. They also use software to consistently outbid you 24/7. The only winners in PPC bidding may be the search engines and your power-mad competition (who is 99% very likely not hitting their ROIs).

3) Where does click fraud come from? That's a broad question for another day. But some of your black hat competitors employ nefarious bots and spider software to click on your ads and backspace out of your landing pages. This costs you money and reduces your SEO value according to search engine algorithms. There are entities out there purposefully designed to waste your ad spend and lower your ad visibility.

4) Your top competitors may never be beaten because of the age and sheer size/activity of their internet properties. Plus, I believe advertising tenure goes into search engine algorithms. Advertising tenure is the length of time, and total money spent on PPC advertising. How can you say search engines don't assign a figurative and quantitative value to this? PPC advertising is not to be viewed as a game where there must be a way to win.

5) The search engines aren't in the business of revealing to you the cheapest bid required for your desired rank. They are in the business of charging your credit card each month for as much as possible. Your ad spending is opaque and most likely inflated.

6) The search engines are not interested in saving you money from ubiquitous click fraud. Even more waste, as reported by the NY Times. Again, your ad spending is opaque and most likely inflated.

7) Even if you have the best internet property, and want to pay top dollar, search engines will never guarantee top ranking. Think about this: How many online book selling companies are there in the United States? Thousands? How many of them are willing to pay and do pay top dollar for at least first page ranking? Hundreds? If there are only 11 PPC ad rank spots on the first page of a query, how does a search engine cater to them all? The larger question is, how do you know search engines aren't just taking your money and serving your ads poorly? Ad serving itself is not transparent. At the end of the day, search engines charge you an unitemized, unqualified total, and you are expected to pay.

Conclusion? PPC management should not be run by the typical inexperienced business owner. PPC management, almost like accounting, is a ruthless affair if you want to handle it profitably. You have to know where to cut your losses, and know what areas on your internet properties you need to work on.

The best PPC management help you can find has expertise in other wide areas of Internet marketing. PPC advertising is not something that exists on an island. Other Internet marketing disciplines effect your ad spending efficiencies.

Consider hiring an experienced PPC management agency that caters to small businesses, works on low fees, and is well-versed on a wide array of Internet marketing tactics. 49er-consulting.com is one such agency based in NJ, but does business nationwide.

49er-consulting.com is a Montclair, NJ-based Internet Marketing Agency specializing in ppc management and seo consulting. The agency is experienced in delivering marketing results for small businesses and rapidly growing companies.

It's services include but are not limited to:

ppc management / pay per click management
email marketing / email list management
seo consulting
search engine marketing
internet advertising
banner advertising
multi-channel marketing
blog marketing web 2.0

For additional information, visit www.49er-consulting.com

First Entry

2009-08-10T09:24:00.001-07:00

Welcome to my blog on ppc management, seo consulting, and small business tips. I'm a senior search engine marketing professional of 11+ years, and take a professional and refreshingly conservative approach to Internet marketing- something my constituents welcome!

In my blog, I discuss all things Internet marketing from the perspective of small businesses. I also include book reviews, and reflect on relevant news.

More to come!