Google has begun canceling or deactivating accounts that have been inactive for a while. Google will email a notification if they do so. If your Google Ads Account cancelled? No worries this 60 second video shows how to instantly reactivate your Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) Account, then breath easy. Here is the transcription of the video: So if your Google Ads campaign has not been active for up to 15 months now Google may cancel your account, or actually render it inactive. So you will receive an email such as this. Not to panic, simply go into your login ...
Read more Here is the video (below it is the transcript and the link to Google’s Adwords Policy) Hi & welcome to this brief, In a Nutshell Video, on Website Usability. Today’s video is a demonstration of a Usability Issue So Bad, That it
Violates Google’s Adwords Policy Who am I? I am Greg Mate of Search Engine Academy Montreal. A Certified Master SEO Instructor, 2006; Internet Marketer & SEO Consultant, 2004; & Certified Usability Analyst, 2011, Please feel free to get in touch 1-514-426-4000 https://www.searchengineacademy.ca/ The Search Engine Academy is a Global Alliance of Certified SEO Instructors, providing hands on SEO workshop ...
Read more September 26 2013 – Google announced that the Hummingbird algorithm update has already been in the wild for a month. It affects 90% of all searches – there were over ONE TRILLION SEARCHES ON GOOGLE IN 2012 “The artificial intelligence dream is being built inside Google” they are trying to reach “a human level understanding of language” according to Amit Singhal of Google “understanding better what users expect from Google, what they are asking , and then fulfilling it via algorithms”. Here is the link to the BBC video hummingbird algorithm interview with Amit Singhal. Interestingly, unlike the previous Panda ...
Read more The Me Meter is a simple online tool to check where your content is more customer focused, or self focused. The more your content is customer focused, the more you tend to deal with their problems and solutions. More than ever today’s Marketing, not to mention Social Media Marketing #SMM, is more about “Don’t tell me how good you are, tell me WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR ME!?” (something Marketing Guru’s stated long ago). The same old in your face “We are the Best..We Are the Oldest etc” is a turn off to customers and prospects. Feel free to try it let me know what you think. Cheers! Greg
On Wed May 2, 2012 1:30 PM EST join John Alexander and myself with 2 more expert panelists for this special Q & A Link Building Webinar. Bring your most burning questions about effective link building, link reputation, link diversity and SEO. Your 3 panelists for this event are: Greg Mate of Search Engine Academy Montreal SEO, Quebec Steve Scott of Search Engine Academy Tampa, Florida. Nancy Wigal of Search Engine Academy Washington DC All seats are free but register early to reserve your spot. Enrollment is limited to the first 500 attendees. Registration closed… Happy tax deadline day Canada! ...
Read more Join me for a Free SEO Webinar where we’ll take a look under the search engines’ hood – from #mattcutts to #panda – and see how to exploit the findings. With luck I’ll pull it all together for you in this one hour SEO webinar. Here is the link to sign up seom.im/seaw122 The slide deck will be quite different than normal, so I would greatly appreciate your friendly support and any feedback you can give me. Of course please share the link above with your colleagues or friends that might be interested. Please feel free to let me know ...
Read more Warrilow & CO listed the Entrepreneurs Top 3 Fears as: 1. Fear of not marketing effectively (38%) 2. Fear of never being able to retire (33%) 3. Fear that they are not staying abreast of new technology (20%) wrote Rick Spense for The Financial Post appearing in the Montreal Gazette today. Lets face it, its as fast a paced world as ever, and knowledge is king. Fear number 3 (behind on new technology) can effect Fear 1 (lack of marketing prowess) and of course both fears have an effect on Fear #2, the ability to retire, early or at all, ...
Read more AOL, owner of Netscape since 1999, has announced that it will “continue to release security patches for the current version of the browser, Netscape Navigator until February 1, 2008.” Troubles for Netscape began in 2000, when under market pressure, it released version 6.0 before it was properly debugged. For more details about this announcement visit the Netscape Blog http://blog.netscape.com/2007/12/28/end-of-support-for-netscape-web-browsers/ For a history of Netscape follow this link on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape Have a great day!
Why do Search Engines crave fresh content? Yahoo, Google and the likes want to give you what you are searching for, so you will return there for your next search. Then, who knows, maybe one day a week you will click on a sponsored ad and the SE will make some money. But how determined are they? The last time I checked, a blog post I made, was indexed by Google in 9 hours (by the time I checked). It was ranking in 21 hours – again by the time I thought to check. So how about you? The SEs ...
Read more According to the students – now graduates – of the Certified SEO Basic Essentials and Advanced SEO Workshops held in Oakville last month, big time. Barry and I had a great time with the students who really dug in and participated in the class and the group projects Joining us were John Alexander, co-founder of the Search Engine Academy, who presented the magic of keyword and behavior research, and Bob Gill www.i2bglobal.com who worked with us in the Advanced Workshop presenting SEO database workarounds and more technical topics. Check out the testimonials to see what our past students think of ...
Read more Just in! John Alexander, Search Engine Academy co-founder, will be joining SEO Expert Instructors Barry Byers & Greg Mate for 2 days of the Advanced 3-Day SEO Workshop November 14 & 15 2007 in Oakville (Toronto, Ontario). Nov 12-13 is the 2-Day SEO Basic Essentials Workshop. Nov 14-16 is the Advanced 3-Day SEO Workshop. The 5-Day All Inclusive SEO Course runs Nov 12-16. There is limited seating. The fast approaching registration deadline for these Search Engine Optimization Training Courses is 5pm Nov 2, 2007. These are interactive workshops – not seminars – one will learn a proven 6 step method ...
Read more Ask.com traffic is down 28% acoording to Parent company , Answers Corp. The company links the slowdown in search engine traffic directly to changes in Google’s algorithm. Just like search engine optimizers, Ask is now analyzing the algorithm change and take the appropriate actions.
According to Hitwise, Google continued to dominate May 2007 percentage of US searches. Google 65.13% Yahoo 20.89% MSN 8.40% Ask 3.92%
Bambi Francisco’s MarketWatch article on demonstrates how consumers are forcing change in traditional media. In the magazine industry, advertising pages at Time Warner Inc.’s Time magazine were down 23.8% in 2006 from 2000. Newsweek’s ad pages fell about 17.6% in the same period. In the newspaper industry, the New York Times stock has been halved since trading above $50 in 2002. In the music industry, sales of CDs have been declining in the last seven years and fell 20% in the first quarter of this year. Retail outlets — saw 800 music stores shut down in 2006.
Marketing Pilgrim gives you a terrific summary of a webinar from eRetaliers Network. The webinar includes powerful tips on increasing your web site conversion rates. You can download the eRetailers Network report here.
Yahoo Inc. is about to start a new ad campaign using comedy, that will run on traditional and online media, according to NewFactor.com “Last year Yahoo outspent Google by 72%, $353 million in advertising vs. Google’s $205 million, according to TNS Media Intelligence.” Theresa Howard wrrote. Even after spending $98 million more in advertising “…Yahoo’s first-quarter ad revenue was $1.6 billion, less than half of Google’s $3.8 billion in the same period. Yahoo’s share of search requests in the quarter remained flat at about 28%, while Google’s rose slightly to 48%, according to Internet tracker ComScore.” So what does Yahoo ...
Read more In October Yahoo purchased 20% of the 4-year-old company, Right Media, for $40 million. Yesterday Terry Semel, Chairman and CEO of Yahoo Inc announced they have agreed to purchase the remaining 80% for another $680 million. Semel’s post Democracy and the online ad states “… I believe has the potential to dramatically enhance Internet advertising. We hope to revolutionize the way ads are bought and sold on the Internet and, in turn, drive more value for advertisers, publishers, and partners.” In One Giant Leap for the Exchange, and for Interactive Advertising Right Media Founder and CEO, Michael Walrath, claims “It’s ...
Read more Well as of March you were right, by a whisker – can you call a million visitors a whisker? ComScore Inc. claims that for the first time (in March 2007) Google surpassed Microsoft Corp. to become the owner of the world’s most-visited group of Web sites. In March Google’s worldwide sites saw 528 million visitors, Microsoft had 527 million, while Yahoo had 476.3 million, and 4th was Time Warner Inc. with 272 million visitors. Compared to a year ago: Google’s sites grew 13%, Microsoft’s sites 4% and Yahoo’s sites increased 1%, while Time Warner Inc. managed a 21% gain. Of ...
Read more TechCrunch provides information about Genbook. The company “is building a “pay-per-booking†product to allow local businesses to capture online bookings in real-time. The product will be distributed through online directories and local search engines, and businesses will pay a fee per booking.” Pay-per-action programs like Gentech will dominate online search within the next 12 months. Â
Google opened its public beta for Pay-Per-Action (PPA) advertising and is now permitting selected advertisers to bid on clicks and on actions according to a Business Week article. This is what customers have been wanting for years. It will eliminate click fraud. Advertisers will be able to add parameters before they pay for a click.
NBC and News Corp will distribute free TV shows and movies through AOL, MSN, Yahoo and MySpace. A few weeks ago Joost reported that they will be offering ad-supported versions of Viacom Programs. Web TV is just getting going and offers a multitude of opportunities for internet savvy individuals and companies.
eMarketer.com’s report estimates that the big 4 will account for 66.6% on online advertising revenue in 2007. 2004 2007 Google 13.1% 32.1% Yahoo! 18.4% 18.7% AOL 6.8% 9.1% MSN 9.4% 6.8% Total: 47.7% 66.6% Even without Google , the remaining 3 still account for 1/3 of the internet ad spend total.
Entrepreneur.com has an interesting article on local search and 15 ways to promote your site locally. Google AdWords Yahoo! Local Listings CitySearch Ask.com’s AskCity AOL’s CityGuide Craigslist MerchantCircle.com Dotster Local.com Froogle Local ReachLocal RegisterLocal TrueLocal YellowPages.com Web.com’s MyEzClicks program You can follow the links to review each of the sites.
Computerworld published an article regarding some interesting comments from Matt Cutts. The article mentions Matt and some freely offered clues, “such as placing keywords in the title, headings and even the URL, and keeping related words close together.” Hint (LSI). Keywords in the title, description, headings and url are a standard practice. LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) is a fantastic tool and in many cases, if you are knowledgeable about your topic, you may find out that the LSI is already in place when the writing is complete.
Ad Age Digital reports that when it comes to online advertising, relevance rules. Â A recent study by Travelociy indicates that banner ads that generate dynamic content specific to location (provided by IP targeting) perform 6-7 times better than static advertising.
A Google blog entry indicates that Google will make their user records anonymous after 18-24 months. Taking steps to protect the privacy of their users, Google intends to begin the process in the next few months. You can choose to have your records retained for personalized search.
I love this comment on Matt Cutts’ blog. Matt is talking about viral marketing and the tactics used by a website to spread the word. “The buzz built pretty organically. USB drives were left in bathrooms at conferences and messages were hidden in conference T-shirts. It’s much better to let people find you than to push too hard to get noticed. The links from the people-find-you approach are more organic than if someone spammed to get links to viral sites.” I added bold to the comment I am referring to. Think about it, Matt Cutts telling you it is better to let ...
Read more Matt Cutts’ blog indicates that Google is taking a serious look at search results within results. Search results can be infuriating when you click on a top results only to find yourselves once again looking at a results page. Yes, you may wind up on a camera vendor’s site if you searched for a camera but now the search begins again for the specific camera you are searching for. SearchEngineLand has an in depth analysis of Matt Cutts’ comments and the ramifications Google changes will have for organic and paid search.
ComScore Networks announced, a 10-percent increase in internet users versus January 2006. Top 10 countries by penetration: India 33% Russian Federation 21% China 20% Mexico 18% Brazil 16% Italy 13% Canada 11% Japan 4% South Korea 4% Spain 4% The number of internet users in the U.S. increased 2% to 150,897,000.
If you are a new SEO, you may not yet have realised the amount of work involved in planning, implementing and maintaining an effective internet marketing campaign. I’ve often heard people say with every step it seems to lead to more work, more research. So in an attempt to make life a little easier for you, we are amassing resources to help lessen some of the workload on a page entitled Valuable SEO Internet Search Marketing Resources, Tips Plus Tools. One resource is a link is a Free Keyword Research Tool by WordTracker. Enter a keyword and this quick tool ...
Read more In one innovative move, Fox will attempt to: increase advertising revenue, increase traffic to its local TV affiliate Web sites, making it easy and affordable for the consumer movement to get what it wants the ability to watch whatever whenever or WWEWE (think my acronym will catch on?) and without saying so, I also think Fox is also trying to deal with the problem of unauthorised videos of its shows appearing online. How? As reported in Media Daily News on Friday: Fox will be the first broadcast network to offer prime-time shows for download via its local TV affiliate [Web] ...
Read more In my post February 21st post PPC Gone Bad, RCMP Hangs With Wrong Crowd l wrote about the potential for complications with contextual PPC ads. Not only can they be be tricky to manage, but also the click through ratio tends to be low. Enter Quigo Technologies Inc. Unlike Google AdWords and Yahoo! where advertisers have no idea and little control over which sites their PPC ads run on, Quigo not only gives advertisers a list of where their PPC ads will appear, but also the potential to buy PPC ads on specific Web sites or even on specific Web ...
Read more Canada is the fifth country in which AdCenter has been launched. They honed the product first in France and Singapore, followed by the U.S. and U.K. last year. Barry and I (along with 300? others) attended the launch at an event in Toronto this afternoon. I am just back to Montreal in time to squeak in this post before midnight. David Jakubowski, general manager, Microsoft AdCenter made the trip up from the US to speak – we happened to meet his dad (a nice guy) from Buffalo who was up for the launch and tonight’s hockey game Buffalo (6) vs. ...
Read more MSN launches their own version of YouTube. MSN is testing their own video site, soapbox, as well is dipping their feet into the water looking for additional video content.
At yesterday’s (very successful) SEO 101 Basics Seminars we delivered for some of Yahoo! Search Marketing Canada’s client’s (more on this in another post soon) Barry told of delicate situations that can arise if your PPC ad winds up on a page with negatively related content. The example he used was a Travel Agent’s PPC ad being on a page telling of a disaster. Well last night while waiting (and waiting) for the plane back to Montreal I read that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) found their recruitment PPC ad on the site of an allegedly notorious street gang ...
Read more I have been following the Kelsey Group for years but mostly checking out their research on yellow pages advertising. Like the rest of us, they are now well into search.  Here is some interesting info they have provided for local search: Online maps, in combination with local search engines, have become very popular in recent years, giving people a way to discover local businesses and attractions, obtain driving directions and view satellite images of an area, among other things. Google competitors like Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Ask.com have made their mapping sites a high priority for development. Advertising revenue in local search ...
Read more In a Google blog entry in January, Google indicated that it would remove the linking value on NoFollow links. Now SearchEngineJournal gives us 13 reasons why NoFollow tags suck. Before trying any seo techniques, ask yourself if you are following the Vulcan theory of SEO. Is what I am about to do logical for the growth of my business or am I trying to manipulate the search engines? Frankly, if you are asking the question, you already know the answer, don’t you.
Search Engine Marketing Professionals’ (SEMPO) recent survey indicates that Google’s AdWords program is used by 96% of pay per click advertisers. Yahoo! Search Marketing is not far behind at 86%. Microsoft came in with a surprising 68% thanks to their new adCenter program. More info at Sempo’s website.
A Piper Jaffray & Co. report indicates that the average Cost Per Action (CPA) for search was $8.50, much lower than the CPA for the Yellow Pages advertising ($20), online display ads ($50) and direct mail ($70). Great statistical information you can use when discussing a complete marketing program with local clients.
We often talk about becoming an industry expert. This week, Jason Calacanis ripped into seo with several derogatory statements about the industry in general. Whether you agree or disagree, besides the wrath of the seo world, you can bet that his controversial remarks earned him dozens of links to his site . On the flip side, you have Danny Sullivan who responded to Jason’s remarks on his blog SearchEngineLand.com. If you have been in the seo business for more than 5 minutes, you know that Danny knows what he is talking about and tells it like it is. Two very different ...
Read more Outsell, Inc. has released a report that seems to indicate that we are reaching the end of an era: they project broadcast and print ad spending will decrease in 2007. Key findings of their survey of 1010 advertising professionals include: *Search marketing is the fastest growing online medium: advertisers plan to increase search engine advertising spend by 39% (though Outsell didn’t indicate whether this was SEO, PPC or both in its press release). *Print still holds the largest market share of ad spend (40%), but its slice of the pie is shrinking.   Â
We have been discussing personalization for a couple of years but now Google is stepping up the process. You can check out their blog for more details.
 Yahoo! released Yahoo! Pipes and it is an terrific tool especially for a non techie like me. Instead of receiving a dozen feeds on any topic, seo for example, you are able to set up a pipe that will aggregate all seo feeds into one feed. Very cool! Here is a quote from Yahoo! and a link for more information. “Pipes  is a hosted service that lets you remix feeds and create new data mashups in a visual programming environment. The name of the service pays tribute to Unix pipes, which let programmers do astonishingly clever things by making ...
Read more An Article on Informationweek.com by K.C.Jones indicates that Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, hopes to launch Search Wiki in a few months. The new search engine will be “built by the masses” and use a traditional ad revenue model.
MSN Adcenter labs provides some interesting and fun tools you can use in your search engine marketing program.
Scott Smith is providing valuable local search information this week with interviews of twenty industry leaders. A must read for you local search maniacs.
Google’s official webmaster blog now recommends using Google webmaster tools to view a much larger sample of links to your pages. You have to verify your own site but it is an easy process.
Yahoo! launched their new ranking model designed to improve user results through higher quality search ads. Top spots won’t go to the highest bidder any longer. A combination of click through rate and bid amount will determine positioning. Â
There are many ways for search engines to “find” your web site. Manual submission is a frequently used method, but considering the fact that over 90% of submissions to search engines is spam, why would you choose that route? Put on the search engine’s shoes for a moment. Wouldn’t you consider everything spam, and put the onus on the submitted sites to prove themselves as “white hat” before being indexed? However, if, as a search engine, you spider an authoratative site where you come across a link to a site that is unfamiliar to you, wouldn’t you give this site ...
Read more Toronto, Ontario, Canada – Wednesday, January 31 2007 Last night at a Yahoo! Canada event in Toronto, Yahoo! Search Marketing Canada announced (along with their new YSM – Panama – platform in Canada) that they are sponsoring two Search Engine Academy seminars. The 3 hour seminars – a morning and afternoon session – will be held in Toronto in mid February. Yahoo ! Canada announced their mission to help grow the Search landscape in Canada. One way they believe they can achieve this is through a highly educated clientele. Their announcement last night was a major step in that direction, ...
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