Monday, July 7, 2008

Section 2: Around the Net in Search Marketing

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U-Haul.com: A Prime Online Shopping Experience
MoreVisibility
Joe Teixeira waxes poetic about the virtues of U-Haul's online shopping cart in this post, having had to use it to prep for an upcoming move. In addition to searching for and reserving a truck, Teixeira also needed to purchase moving tools like a mattress bag. And each step in the process was "smooth, easy, efficient and effective," he said.

The cart navigation itself was intuitive and simple. Teixeira notes that he could add and remove cart items, and get sub-totals and totals with one click. U-Haul also included a nice call to action (free shipping for orders over $25) in an area where there would normally be white space.

Other factors that contributed to a great online shopping experience included well-detailed and informative product pages, a fast, functional log-in (or create a new account) screen, as well as overall quick page load times. - Read the whole story...

Get Yahoo's 'Smart Start' Guide To Paid Search
Unofficial Google Analytics Blog
Yahoo rolled out a free handbook for paid search advertisers dubbed "Yahoo Smart Start," and Katherine Anderson offers up a review. "Although Yahoo's blog claims that 'Yahoo Smart Start' is a guide for beginners, I would say that the guide is definitely geared more to those who have some experience with pay-per-click advertising but are not experts," she says.

In addition, Anderson says that the guide would be a great tool to give to clients who were curious about the YSM interface. The handbook is broken down into 10 chapters that cover keyword research and campaign organization, ad quality, bidding strategies, as well as analytics and content network tactics.

The chapters follow a Q&A format, opening with a typical advertiser question, and then going through the best possible solutions to said problem. Each chapter also features a bulleted list, and there's a troubleshooting guide at the back. "The best part about the guide is that advertisers like myself can use it as a quick reference, say if you forget where to add excluded keywords or where to set daily budgets," Anderson says. - Read the whole story...

The Merits of Image ALT Tags
Search Engine Guide
Stoney deGeyter delves into the ins and outs of image alt tags, explaining why they're important and offering an example of image alt tag rehab for a specific site.

"Almost universally, you should be using ALT text to describe each of your images," deGeyter says. "I say 'almost' because if you are still using clear images for formatting, styling, or spacing (you shouldn't be!) then those images don't need any description. As a side note, if you want your HTML to validate properly then every image needs an ALT attribute, even if it's left empty."

Sometimes, the alt text acts as a replacement for text in an image, like a company logo. The alt tag text can also vary depending on where the image appears (on a company's own site, or as an example in a blog post, a favicon on a social network, etc.) and you can choose to be as descriptive (or not) as necessary. - Read the whole story...

June's Paid Search Market Share Report
Rimm-Kaufman Group
We've cruised into July, so of course that means it's time for the search marketing firms to release their paid search market share reports. While it's no surprise that Google gets the lion's share of the Rimm-Kaufman Group's (RKG) client's dollars, the firm's stats do show increases for Yahoo (at Google's expense) for the past four months. Microsoft, meanwhile, snags a higher effective CPM (eCPM) than Google or Yahoo, but because the software giant's share of market is so small, the gains don't register as well.

So Google snagged 79% of all client spend. Yahoo came in with 17%, and Microsoft garnered 5%. Alan Rimm-Kaufman says that the data also offers a barometer of overall click quality across the engines. "Click quality is a function of both the population using each engine, as well as the engines' skill at matching searches with relevant ads," he says. - Read the whole story...

U.K. Cosmo Site Doubles Traffic With SEO
Journalism.co.uk
The U.K. version of the Cosmopolitan magazine Web site upped its monthly uniques to just over 415,000 in May. That's up 136% from about seven months ago, and the women's pub achieved the lift through a major site overhaul and SEO.

Page views also doubled from about 2.3 million in October 2007, to 5.1 million in May. According to Alex Ballantyne, managing director of Hearst Digital, Cosmo's relaunch was built on a content management platform that actually encouraged editors to tag articles for search. The company also used the print mag and other properties within its network to help promote the new cosmopolitan.co.uk. - Read the whole story...



Search Insider - Around the Net for Monday, July 7, 2008
http://publications.mediapost.com/?sfa=ed&t=44&d=2008-7-7

 

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