Last time we went over the basics of PPC and how it works in general. Today, we’re going to talk about some of the key components of PPC.

Keywords:

Choosing keywords that are relevant to your end goal will be one of the first things you will do. Most search engine platforms will offer you a keyword discovery tool that will get you started with your list. You can also check out your own website and the websites of companies in your industry for more ideas. You might want to try using synonyms in some cases where you think people might search that way. For each keyword, you will need to enter a match type. There are three kinds of matching:

(more…)

Google boasts a democratic system for search engine marketing where any user, large or small, is given an equal chance to set their budget, begin bidding on keywords and win the targeted traffic they desire. But is it really that simple?

No, it’s not. While anyone can do it and everyone wants to do it, competition in pay per click advertising can be fierce. In some markets, the big boys have limitless budgets versus the smaller guys who have to be smart and economical to get traffic and conversions from their campaigns. But don’t quit yet. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) not only can send you good targeted and relatively inexpensive traffic, but there is also an opinion that for Google ranking it does matter if the site is also advertised through their programs. Maybe a little bit, but still does.

In many ways, paid search is like the Gold Rush. It attracts a lot of businesses and service providers who are encouraged by results and eager for profits. Many search programs are launched quickly with the abundance of tools offered by search engines like Google and Yahoo!, but are soon after forgotten. Leaving your program untended is often the precursor to failure for many smaller players in the paid search market, and because of this many campaigns prematurely fall off. Keep in mind what seems like failure often means learning in SEM, so get used to it.

(more…)

Jared talks about a brand new upgrade in Stun! called Video Broadcasting. mobileStorm clients can now easily upload videos into Stun! and have them distributed to multiple video communities like youtube, myspace and dailymotion, as well as gain valuable insight into how those videos are performing:

Recently, the email sending industry saw some fairly significant issues with delivering email to Yahoo. Senders trying to deliver bulk emails to their Yahoo subscribers found these to be continually “deferred”, or temporarily bounced back. It was later discovered that Yahoo had upgraded their filtering systems, which caused this continuous deferring. Since then, they have fine-tuned their systems, and are reporting that the issue has been resolved. Yahoo also noted that any sender still experiencing their mail being deferred is an issue that the sender will need to resolve. I would like to discuss both the mechanics of mailing systems, with respect to deferring, as well as why some ISPs (like Yahoo) choose to defer messages.

MTAs Explained

To the average individual, sending email is all about composing a message and clicking the “send” button. The message then is somehow delivered to the recipient. However, there is a whole lot of technology that happens in those few seconds when the message is transmitted. Here’s a simplified process flow:

(more…)