From: searchenginewatch.com

Overstock is the next company to drop affiliate programs in states considering or having passed affiliate nexus bills. While North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Hawaii affiliates are already seeing programs dropped by Amazon and Blue Nile, this time California affiliates are also getting the boot.

“It’s painful to have to terminate these relationships with affiliates, simply because they live in states where counterproductive (and likely unconstitutional) laws are being passed,” said Patrick Byrne, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Overstock.com. “However, politicians have to remember that a tax is a price that government charges for a service, and when they raise their prices, we’re going to buy less of their services.”

Last year, Overstock was one of over 200 companies to drop their affiliate program in New York, which was the first state to enact an affiliate tax. The cancellation affected 3,400 affiliates, 200 of which were active.

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/rBfPaE-fNbk/090701-131958

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From: searchenginewatch.com

StatCounter made news fast and furious in Bing’s first week when they offered up data showing Bing had surpassed Yahoo! in search. And now they’re making a splash again by quickly releasing data for the whole month of June.

Overall, things are relatively steady, but there’s an ever-so-slight increase in Microsoft search share.

The data shows Bing gaining .5% search share in June compared to May. But Live Search had gained about .5% in May over April.

One percent growth over the last two months may not seem significant, but it could be the beginning of momentum.

“At first sight, a 1% increase in market share does not appear to be a huge return on the investment Microsoft has made in Bing but the underlying trend appears positive,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “Steady if not spectacular might be the best way to describe performance to date.”

Plus, the 1% growth has come at the expense of Google. The search mammoth saw its search engine share according to StatCounter decline by 79.07% in April to 78.48% in June.

By the way, despite that first week of traffic for Bing, Yahoo! still retained its second place status for the entire month of June. Yahoo!’s traffic has remained fairly steady over the past three months in StatCounter data.

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/NaNqFXM84WU/090701-130014

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From: sitepronews.com

One of the most common questions I’m getting these days is “how should I measure the value of all the social marketing things we’re doing like Twitter, Linked-in, Facebook, etc.?”
My answer: WHY are you doing them in the first place? If you can’t answer that, you’re wasting your time and the company’s money.
Sounds simple I [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Twittering Away Time And Money

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/07/01/twittering-away-time-and-money/

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From: sitepronews.com

It is a simple fact that if you sell on eBay and receive only minimal views on your listings then the lower the bidding or amount of sales will be. It does not matter how detailed and professional your listings look, viewings are the key. And the key to increasing the number of viewings is [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Sell on eBay - How To Write Profitable Listings

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/07/01/sell-on-ebay-how-to-write-profitable-listings/

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From: searchenginewatch.com

Google has updated their Toolbar for the Internet Explorer browser to make language translation easier. Instead of manually copying and pasting text into Google Translate, the Toolbar now automatically detects if a language is different from the one set as your default.

Google will then serve up a message saying it has detected a language foreign to your own and asking if you would like it translated. Simply click the “Tranlate” button in order to receive the translation.

The new feature is available for all languages of the Toolbar (but again, just for Internet Explorer). The languages include: English, and the translation service supports 41 different languages: Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/_vaHkQRnHv0/090701-105445

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From: searchenginewatch.com

YouTube is now allowing advertisers to incorporate a “Call-to-Action overlay” on their videos. With the overlay, advertisers can drive traffic to their sites where they can make purchases, sign up for email newsletters or whichever action an advertiser wishes.

The Call-to-Action overlays are available for Promoted Videos only. Promoted Videos, you may remember, are essentially the paid search of YouTube. They were once called Sponsored Videos, similar to paid search listings called Sponsored Listings.

In order to set up the overlay:

1. Set up your Promoted Video campaign like you normally would in YouTube

2. Under My Videos, go to the Video Details page

3. Fill out the fields for the Call-to-Action overlay section

You’re all set. Once the campaign is in full swing, you can check YouTube Insight to see how many people are clicking on the Call-to-Action overlay.

What do you think of this new option for YouTube advertisers? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/l1paITQ1nw0/090701-101754

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From: searchenginewatch.com

I’ve been attending SES San Jose every year since 2003. And each year a healthy proportion of attendees are attending their first search engine marketing conference ever.

This is healthy because it expands the number of marketers who “get it.”

I can’t tell you the number of times when prospective clients mistakenly assume that search engine marketing (SEM) isn’t rocket science. Or they mistakenly believe that search engine optimization (SEO) is something their information technology (IT) department took care of years ago. Or they mistakenly think that a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign takes 15 minutes to set up. Or they mistakenly hope that their public relations (PR) people have a good handle on social media marketing.

So, I’m delighted to see the large number of first time attendees at Search Engine Strategies conferences—because after they’ve sat in on a dozen sessions over three days they come away knowing how much more there is to learn.

Hey, if it were easy, we’d all rank #1.

So, with SES San Jose 2009 coming up August 10-14, I thought I’d highlight some of the conference sessions that I’d recommend to first time attendees. I’ve been doing this for several years—and even spoke along with Matt Bailey of SiteLogic in a few “First Timer’s Guide to SES and SEM” sessions at some events.

But, most marketers like to plan ahead. So, look over the SES conference agenda and check out some of the sessions that address your needs and your organization’s issues.

If you want some suggestions, here are sessions specially focused on search fundamentals for first time attendees:

• Introduction to Search Engine Marketing provides a clear and concise overview of the concepts involved in search engine marketing.

• Successful Site Architecture offers a fresh look at topics on how to successfully design a site for search engines, including JavaScript, robots.txt use, frames, secure area usage and much more.

• Turn Brain Science into Bucks: Incorporating Persuasive Messaging into Your Content Strategy showcases current online content campaigns and explains the best content strategies to help persuade buyers, build trust, and get great search engine listings using Twitter, white papers, optimized web pages and more.

• SEO Tools of the Trade: What’s in YOUR Toolbox? describes the tools that will help accomplish tasks, including indexing, competitive analysis, site ranking, diagnosing and remedying problems and much more.

• Search Advertising 101 describes the basic principles and applications of paid placement.

• Keywords & Content: Search Marketing Foundations presents an overview of the important keywords customers are searching for and how to target the right terms in paid and organic search marketing.

• Discover the Power of Linking: Link Building Basics focuses on the role of link analysis in search engine site rankings and how to increase site traffic by building quality links.

• The Findability Formula: The Easy, Non-Technical Approach to SEM features search engine guru Heather Lutze taking a fresh look at how search engines find content and what steps to take to ensure a successful online marketing campaign.

• Extreme Makeover is a series of four sessions held throughout day three of the conference. Volunteers are taken from the audience, their websites are examined and feedback is provided. Sessions include:
Extreme Makeover: Live Site Clinic provides general feedback about improving websites and gaining more traffic from search engines.
Extreme Makeover: Live Twitter & Blogging Clinic provides general feedback about how to improve your website’s use of Twitter and blogging.
Extreme Makeover: Live Landing Page Clinic provides feedback on how to improve landing pages.
Extreme Makeover Live! Why Am I Not Making Enough Sales? covers the most common reasons many sites have low conversion rates and gives tips on how to turn more site visitors into paying customers.

I think you can see from the suggestions above that there is more to SEM, SEO, PPC and social media than a handful of tricks that you can pick up by reading a blog post. Oh, and if the folks over in finance are still cutting travel budgets these days, ask them this rhetorical question: “If I don’t learn how to improve our search engine marketing, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, or social media marketing, then how will the company be able to pay your salaries next year?”

Okay, so maybe you don’t want to actually say that to their faces. And you don’t want to start calling finance the “department of sales prevention.” They are just doing their job.

But you can show them the SES conference agenda and let them know that you’ve picked out sessions to attend that will provide your company with a return on its investment (ROI) in marketing. Finance folks love it when you talk about ROI. Your talking their language.

Or, ask them to watch the video below. Yes, yes, it makes the case for going to Search Engine Strategies. But it also demonstrates visually that SES San Jose, which is the largest search engine marketing expo on the West Coast, will be packed with more than 70 sessions, multiple keynotes, and Orion panels, over 150 exhibitors, networking events, and more.

<iframe class="embeddedvideo" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/3EfopGTBmaM&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"></iframe>

Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/G04aVcJVe3Y/090701-100030

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