Political Search Engine Marketing

Google Vote Logo.

Google for President:
Steven Berlin Johnson is probably one of my 3-4 favorite authors. He writes awesome books and lots of cool articles.

Not too long ago he wrote Google for President, which looked at how the presidential campaigns were missing the boat (no, not the swift one) on buying Google AdWords ads.

Participatory Democracy:
Democracy only works if you actively participate. Over the last two months I have been running a smallish campaign on Google AdWords for the presidential election. I wrote about my line of logic and my actions in a boringly named article Political Search Engine Marketing.

I do not care much for either canidate, but think now is a good time for change. Whether you think I am right or wrong it is a fact that our government, our society, and our world would be far better off if people questioned authority and spoke their mind a bit more often.

Anyone think Political SEM is going to get huge?
Just in case it does I registered the domain name. No intention of making a site for it anytime soon, but if I really start to dig politics it could be a fun way to get into some mischief. There are lots of other things I want to learn about too though :)

Other SEO / SEM Blogs Covering the Election ;)

Traffic Power Sinks to New Lows :-(

Las Vegas Tribune article...

New Google AdWords Features...

Ads Diagnostic Tool
Choose one of the two options below to find out why your ads may not be showing for a certain query.

Change Maximum Cost-Per-Clicks (CPCs)
Filter your Ad Groups or keyword lists, then adjust multiple maximum cost-per-click (CPC) amounts all at once. <--- not sure how new this is, but it has the new logo next to it.

Faster Reports
Reports of all sizes are now faster and more reliable than ever.

From the horses mouth

Froogle Upgrades...

From Froogle Newsletter Volume 4...

Ad Automator
Froogle merchants with over 1000 products who are also AdWords advertisers are invited to try out the beta release of our new ad-producing technology, the ad automator.

The ad automator uses sophisticated technology to automatically create and target AdWords ads based on structured data feeds, which are nearly identical to the data feeds you submit to Froogle. You’ll be able to create keyword-less data feed campaigns in your existing AdWords account while investing minimal time and effort. Simply send us your feeds, and the ad automator will automatically generate targeted AdWords ads that begin showing right away. You’ll be able to:

  • Leverage the product copy you’ve already written for your site
  • Generate specific, high-CTR ads with no additional work

  • Increase the number of queries on which your ads appear

The ad automator provides added coverage by targeting queries that may have been overlooked in your keyword campaign. The ads produced are highly relevant and precisely targeted to the user’s search query.

If you’re a merchant and advertiser who’d like to take advantage of Google’s ad automator, please drop us a line at automator-signup@google.com. Please include your AdWords account number in your note.

Ad Automator if / when done correctly will be huge...

a couple other new features...
Merchant Ratings:
Google does not store its own rating system, but pulls together aggregate ratings score and snippets of customer reviews from third party sites.

Compare Prices
Allows you to compare the prices for a specific item in many stores. It is still under development, but already works well for ISBN's or UPC's.

You can see both features when searching for 0130957011... or other good books by # :)

BellSouth to Sell Google AdWords

BellSouth to Sell Google AdWords:
This is the first time someone outside of Google has been able to directly sell AdWords (to plumbers).

GoogleGuy World Tour:
Actually not a world tour, but he showed up at SEW forums.

Google: Not for Me:
Russell Baettie explains why he does not want to work at Google.

& Not for Online Publishers:
Online publishers rail against Google - yawn
(thanks to Gary)

SEO Forum Madness

A bunch of random forum news...
Hired?
Lots of stuff going on in the SEO Forum scene. In the last week not one but two people have tried to hire me as moderators for new forums that are coming out. I said no, but talk about a saturated market... One of the forums is a big money pay site, the other will be at a link site (since they are not out yet neither of them are mentioned by name in this post).

Its kinda cool that people would be willing to pay me to do what I do for free anyway. I wonder if it would be worth it to try to make my own forum? I could have one of a million SEO forums :)

New Forums:
My friend Nandini is starting a new forum called SEO Zip. I am not supposed to mention it until tomorrow, but I felt like mentioning it with all the other forum stuff. I am trying to help her get it off the ground running, so I will try to post there a good bit. Please stop by and say hi.

Post Trades is a new forum dedicated to link trading. They got a cool tool for analyzing data about your site in the upper right corner too.

Derek Chew also has a new forum at SEO Place.

Forum Spammer:
(from an anonymous forum moderator at a forum which is new to me) I got accused of major forum spamming for the first time:

Your many posts in the seo forum smell like spam to me. I am sure of it. But, I am a fan of link spam so no problem... just try to put more thought into your posts. It is too obvious that your just trying to get a high post count and want to post the smallest amount necessary in order to give a half-assed answer.

I am not saying your answers are wrong - just shallow, and you know it. If you don't know it then you have no business running seobook.

I did not even put a sig link in my posts and all I could think was "what a jerk."

Retired:
Lots0 just retired from moderating at SearchGuild. If I had to list 2 or 3 people who taught me the most about the web and SEO stuff his name would be on the list. Thanks for teaching me so much Lots0 and hope to see you around.

Don't Forget...
ThreadWatch is a great place to get forum coverage if you don't have time to visit them all.

Moving Briskly Along...

SMA-UK (launched just a few days ago) found so much demand in Europe that SMA-EU was created.

One wonders if and when SMA-US will be created. Perhaps then SEMPO will have officially died.

Various SEO Tools...

Free Reciprocal Link Checker / Manager Tool:
ClickSentry link tool I have not tried it, but it looks cool.
(thanks for the Scoop)

Free PageRank Tool:
yet another one. DaveN says you should run it through a proxy.

Article Submission Spreadsheet:
Recently a guy named Zoran read my ebook and is trying to rank well for stuff like Search
Engine Positioning Firm
. He submitted articles to a bunch of sites and created a free XLS articles checksheet which shows over 70 sites where you can submit articles. Thanks Zoran :)

A while back I made a much shorter article list.

Adobe Partners with Yahoo!
Yahoo! Search to power Adobe Acrobat

Food for Thought
another interesting DaveN post

Obligatory SEO Motivational Poster (Funny?): Many SEOs spend too much time at the computer (well at least I do). Thus I designed and framed a wonderful deluxe collectible limited edition motivational poster...which reminds me to do stuff like exercise and see the sun.

Feel free to use it if you need some motivation :-)

Motivational Poster.

there are lots of other good motivational posters on the market as well...

How to Promote a Golf Site:
Make a fun game...
(thanks to John)

New AdWords Classifications, MSN Desktop Search Coming Soon

New AdWords Classifications
"Google will use its predictive modelling to know what words are not going to do well and give them more time to run. Instead of the 1,000 impressions and you're out... this new system may allow terms as much as 10 times more access to eyeballs." ... coming in November

Google Toolbar is Evil?
DaveN and many other technically gifted aggressive SEOs do not like using the Google Toolbar.

Recent Google Lectures
Gary Price found a recent Google lecture and made a post linking to it and a few other recent lectures.

MSN Search / MSN Desktop Search
coming soon... Did anyone else notice MSN Search being advertised on AdSense? Here is a piece of one of the visuals I saw a few days back:
MSN Search image advertisement on AdSense.

Search Marketing UK Trade Organization...other stuff

SEMPO UK
no way Jose... Sick of the SEMPO antics, the brass of the UK SEO scene have made their own search marketing organization.
With the likes of Barry Lloyd, Ammon Johns, & Mike Grehan I am sure they will do well.

Spammer?
A White KnightTM is crowned

Yahoo!
buys Stata Labs who is the maker of Bloomba

GOOG
their stock is up a bit more on the day. Their market cap sits at 47.37B and Yahoo! is at 47.56B.

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