These days, if a consumer is looking for information they go to the Internet, not the Yellow Pages. Because of that, it’s vital that your company is visible on the search engines and readily available to their users.  Adwords is Google’s paid search marketing tool and an excellent way to reach potential customers.  Though it’s incredibly robust and convenient, launching a campaign within the interface can be intimidating for a new user. Additionally, not fully understanding Adwords can result in unanticipated complications that commonly lead to the ineffective spend of money. In order to successfully execute a campaign, there are many different factors to understand and take into consideration. Knowing the basics of the program allows beginners to correctly set up campaigns and help guarantee they not only reach the correct audience but also maximize their return on ad spend. (more…)

2009 was, by most accounts, a year of severe business challenges and adjustments. Through that however have come significant shifts in business and consumer preferences, practices and technology that will continue to impact marketing trends in 2010. (more…)

Often, geo-targeting your paid search campaign is vital to achieving success and meeting your ROI objectives. It allows you to target search engine users by location, ensuring you don’t pay for clicks from users who would not want or cannot get to your offering. As many of you already know, being able to target and pre-qualify your audience so precisely is one of the core benefits of Internet marketing. There are two main tactics to implement a paid search geo-targeting strategy and this blog will tell you how to do just that. (more…)

For years, MSN adCenter tracking has been a bane to my existence. A large portion of that has been due to the gross inaccuracy of the numbers (somewhat improved with their spring update).  And a larger portion has been due to the fact that, even when we ignore the inaccuracy, we still have to deal with the fact that a very key metric is missing. Really MSN, you want us to run an eComm campaign without being able to report revenue? (more…)

When Google Adwords recently served a Rise Interactive paid search ad for the term “michael head internet sales,” we must admit, we were a little frustrated.  The term we were bidding on was “internet advertising company.”  Since we had the bid set for the broad keyword match type, Adwords felt that “michael head internet sales” was relevant. (more…)

When recently evaluating a new business opportunity, we encountered a rather frustrating problem with Google’s Traffic Estimator. At Rise, we utilize the Traffic Estimator to help estimate total media spend for upcoming paid search campaigns and to analyze if opportunities will be profitable. We began noticing variances between the costs the Traffic Estimator was projecting and the actual costs once the campaign launched. It was concerning to us that the Traffic Estimator may not be the most accurate tool. (more…)

There has been a swarm of articles and blog posts in the last 24 hours discussing the deal reached between Yahoo and Microsoft.  With yesterday’s signing, the landscape of SEO and paid search will be dramatically changing.

What the Deal Entails
The 10-year agreement gives Microsoft control over Yahoo! Search while Yahoo will now focus on promoting the other aspects of its properties (e-mail, messenger, games and puzzles, news, etc).  Yahoo’s site will continue functioning as it currently does, but once the deal is finalized, Bing will power the search on Yahoo.com. The agreement gives Microsoft exclusive rights to Yahoo!’s search technologies and the rights to integrate those technologies into their existing platform. Additionally, Microsoft’s Bing will exclusively provide paid and organic search on Yahoo! Web sites. (more…)

Everyone sees the paid/sponsored links at the top of the search engine results when they perform a search.  What many are unfamiliar with is the tactics companies implement in order to position their ads in that valued real estate.  There are two influencing factors on determining a company’s rank in the paid search space: bid amount and Quality Score.  In this post, we’ll examine both of these elements and explain how the two work together to determine placement in the paid search fields. (more…)

The best way to explain search engine marketing is with an example. Imagine that you sell cell phones and that a prospective customer is searching on a major search engine such as Google for the phrase “free cell phone”. That prospect will probably see a page like this:

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This blog entry picks up where our last one left off, providing more explanations and links to useful tools for generating keyword ideas. Topics discussed include keyword forecasting, estimating search volume, building keyword lists, and user intent.

Keyword Forecasting: We’re frequently asked by our clients to break out our crystal ball and predict/forecast the future performance of potential keywords. Below is a list of tools we use here to perform such a task:
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