• The deal is still a long way from closing, in fact the complete bing/Yahoo! search engine is at least two years away. The process of approval alone will likely take the rest of 2009.
• Microsoft’s adCenter platform will replace Yahoo!’s Panama platform. This means that ads placed in Yahoo! will be managed through MSN adCenter’s interface. This will take additional transition time after the deal is approved by regulators.
• Cost Per Click (CPC) prices will be set by adCenter’s automated auction process. With an increase in advertisers coming to bing from Yahoo!, it will be interesting to see what happens with CPCs. Like anything in the PPC medium, industry verticals will obviously play a large role.

One of the primary shortcomings of Microsoft’s adCenter was lack of volume. It simply does not generate as much traffic as Google or Yahoo! This is one of the most intriguing parts to this partnership. In the words of a press release from www.choicevalueinnovation.com:

“With the addition of Yahoo!’s search volume, Microsoft will achieve the size and scale required to unleash competition and innovation in the market, for consumers as well as advertisers.”

Overall, the general consensus among the PPC community is that this partnership is a good thing for the PPC industry. It will give Google increased competition and also will give Microsoft the search volume it needs to accelerate the learning from its own marketplace and improve its adCenter platform more quickly. I’m looking forward to any improvements Microsoft can make to its adCenter management interface. At the moment, AdWords provides the most advanced campaign management tools, so it will be interesting to see what improvements Microsoft can make with the increased search volume and insight from Yahoo!.

Sources: ad Age, Choice. Value. Innovation., and SEW

So what makes a good landing page?

First and foremost, when a potential customer lands on your page he expects it to include the content you promised to deliver. Don’t lure someone in through your PPC ad promising to solve his need for a run-flat tire then reveal on the landing page you only sell tire rims. You must specifically address your visitor’s need — the need you anticipated in your PPC ad, email, or organic search result.

Give your visitor a simple path of conversion and a clear call to action. Don’t fill your landing page with a load of useless drivel. Address the visitor’s need, tell them how you can solve that need with your product or service, and then allow them to take immediate action.

Make sure you include a link to your company’s privacy policy on the landing page. You want your visitor to know his data is protected.

Use analytics to measure your landing page’s effectiveness. Is conversion tracking in place? Test it and work out the bugs. Track bounce rate and time on site. Following these measurements can help you tweak your landing page and convert more onlookers to active participants.

So how mouth-watering is your landing page? How can anyone resist when you give a clear benefit and call to action!

Unlike most Search Engine Optimization (“SEO”) analysts, I have a background as an editor and proofreader — I don’t have a marketing or technical background.

I think of a Web site as a book. Each book is made up of pages of words – words that the search engines need to see and words that will get you what you want, whether it’s buyers, members, or subscriptions. Sure, there are pictures in the book, but what makes or breaks your site is the words, and I LOVE words.

Editors look at the world differently. I find some perverse pleasure in finding typos in articles in The Washington Post. It secretly delights me to give a red-marked page to a coworker. When I drive past the tire place that offers “wheel alinement,” I imagine dropping a friendly note in the mail.

I spent the first 10 years of my professional career editing and proofreading. The work varied, from the National Captioning Institute, where I transcribed and edited prerecorded video to a particular “words-per-minute” rate, to Elias, Matz, Tiernan, & Herrick, a corporate law firm that demanded accuracy in every number within hundred-page financial documents.

After a stint in central Virginia, where, as an artist, I ran my own business web site, my park ranger husband moved us back to Northern Virginia, and, after settling in at Mason Neck State Park in Lorton, I decided to try something different. I joined NetStrategies.

With the experience I had running my own web site and seeing how small changes make big differences, something just clicked in my head with SEO and usability. After discussing my interest with Company President Rodney Loges, I began working with the marketing department putting together suggestions for customer sites.

Early in my SEO work, I had a conversation with NetStrategies’ Director of Technology, Robert Moses. As we analyzed a customer’s site and shared insight on the best strategies to optimize that site, I commented that, “It all seems like common sense!” Robert agreed but pointed out you “have to be able to think that way to get it right.”

Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing a Web site to increase the number of qualified visitors from search engine organic results. That’s how I see it – get those qualified visitors to your site, so they buy, join, or subscribe.

I absolutely love the process of search engine optimization – to see what happens when we help a customer with their site. Yes, their site usually comes up higher in the rankings, but more importantly, they see an increase in their customers, members, or subscriptions. They get measurable results from their investment in Internet marketing.

With our phenomenal tech, marketing, and customer service departments, we optimize each site as a team. Working with NetStrategies doesn’t just get you an outsourced SEOer. It also gets you an analytics specialist, a technical specialist, and a PPC specialist. Our team members don’t plug away to kill eight hours. We love what we do, and that makes a difference in our performance.

I still take regular training, am a certified eMarketer, and read countless books and blogs on SEO. I’ve learned a lot in my tenure as an SEOer. Join me as I share tips, tools, and books to help you in your own SEO efforts. I look at SEO from a different angle than a tech or marketing person, but that angle is a good angle. I’m Stacey Morgan Smith, the Director of Search Engine Optimization for NetStrategies, and I may be an editor by training, but I’m an SEOer at heart.

NetStrategies is an Internet marketing optimization company. Their performance command center is the first of its kind in the industry. This fully integrated approach uses a unified marketing dashboard that incorporates best-of-class Internet marketing tools, certified expert marketers, and real-time monitoring of opportunities and threats to each customer’s Internet marketing efforts.