Happy Friday! As usual, please find to follow my picks of the top articles in search this week.

News

You can’t fail to have heard about the Microsoft – Yahoo deal which was struck on 29th July which will see Microsoft’s ‘Bing’ power Yahoo’s searches. Will it threaten Google’s dominance? In the UK it’s unlikely to, but it may mean that some advertisers elect trial advertising on Yahoo/Bing – time will tell.

SEO

Over at SEOmoz Rand’s written a fantastic summary on the implications of the Microsoft-Yahoo deal for SEO.

Meanwhile, a month on since Google’s ‘Vince’ Update, Richard from SEOgadget takes a gander at the results for the search term ‘car insurance’ – and asks brand or no brand?

Social Media

Matt Churchill talks about ‘Auntie’ getting all social media savvy with the launch of Shownar; a great post about how the BBC have been embracing social media.

Lisa Barone asks if Social Media is Becoming a Weapon - and how you might try to handle an attack on your brand. As usual, it’s facinating reading – and the comments are well worth a read too.

PPC

Thinking about outsourcing your PPC activity to an agency? Over at PPCHero Amber’s written a great post on the 10 questions you should ask when looking for a new agency.

Media

Matthew Robson caused a stir when he wrote a memo for Morgan Stanley on How Teenagers Consume Media, interesting reading, but I much preferred Dan Wilson’s response: How 31 Year Olds Consume Media :)

 Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Funny

 Simon’s Cat

Image credit Unhindered by Talent

They say Thursday is the new Friday (or they did once, around 2005 – is Wednesday the new Friday now?) anyhow this week’s round up is a day early, for reasons which will be revealed tomorrow – so Happy Thursday! Here are my picks of the best blog posts in search for the week ending 24/7/09.

SEO

If like me, you think link building is the toughest part of any SEO project, you’d do well to read Garrett French’s post via Search Engine Land on how to research, create and distribute highly linkable content.

Still focusing on the link building theme, Shaun Anderson of Hobo-Web talks about reciprocal links, and whether or not they should be avoided.

PPC

Get some great tips from PPC Hero on PPC landing page optimisation - sterling work from Amber there.

Social Media

Over at Econsultancy, Patricio Robles asks does social media lead to better financial results for companies? As he quite rightly points out, correlation is not necessarily causation – essential reading.

Also well worth a look is the A-B-C’s of Social Media - not least because as Dr Pete said, they’ve come up with an ‘x’ which isn’t xylophone

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Thursday’s Funny

This brilliant picture is from passiveaggressivenotes (click the link to see it in it’s full glory). Hat tip to Rob - genius  

‘Thursday’ image credit adamwilson

Competitor analysis ordinarily forms a key part of any marketing activity, however seemingly, when it comes too PPC, it sometimes gets forgotten. 

All too often I see campaigns with impeccable structure, great keyword selection, judicious use of match types and negative matches and yet; they stumble at the final hurdle. Their ads just aren’t standing up (or standing out) versus the competition.

Consequently, as their click through rates are poor, their quality score is suffering and they’re paying over the odds for their clicks. Bad times.

So, just how good are your ads?

Check out the competition:

So you need to look at your ads in situ – here you’ll be able to see what the competition are doing, and indeed how your ads stack up. Now, you don’t want to look at them live, as you’ll be generating impressions and no clicks, which might hurt your quality score even more. Google have a handy solution – the ad preview tool.

So check you’ve selected the correct geo-targeting options so you can see your ads alongside your competitors, pop in your search query and you’re good to go. Here are some things to look out for:

Offers:
 

Click to enlarge

I’ve chosen to use ‘double glazing’ to illustrate my point as it’s a very competitive ‘offer driven’ sector. On the page you’ll see ads featuring 40% off, 35% off, 70% off, 65% off, buy one get one free, etc, etc.

Now, imagine that you’re offering 35% off – I’m guessing that your click through rates might just suffer in the face of such competition.

So what do you do? Assuming you can’t offer 70% off to stay ahead of the competition, what should you say instead?

My view would be to create a new ad to test. Avoid the whole x% off messaging altogether as it looks like you can’t compete. Instead make a general mention of low pricing, or a sale, then focus on another key benefit – e.g. interest free credit; no quibble guarantees; lower energy bills; etc. Test it versus the current ad, and see what happens.

Humour:

Click to enlarge

Alternatively, you might look for other ways to make your ad stand out versus the competition. Above I’ve shown an example of a search for ppc agencies. Now to my mind, whilst the ads shown are fine, they’re a little bit dry for my taste. Therefore, when I was creating a campaign for Gravytrain I elected to inject a little humour into the mix. Now clearly, depending on the product or service you’re promoting that might not be the way to go, but we’ve seen some success, so I would suggest a test.

Be Topical:

Again here this won’t necessarily be applicable to all products and services, however sometimes mentioning something topical can make your ad stand out versus the competition. We tested a set of ads which referenced the credit crunch for one of our insurance clients, which saw significantly higher click through rates than their previous best performing ad. Interestingly conversion rates also held up well.

Whatever you decide to do, we wouldn’t recommend making wholesale changes to your ads – instead leave your best performer live and create an alternative and see how it works for you. In order to give your new ad some exposure you’ll need to select: ‘Rotate – show ads more evenly’ within the ad serving options of your campaign settings.

Hopefully you’ve found this useful – if you’ve some additional tips you’d care to share please let me know in the comments.

Happy Friday! Here are my picks of the best blog posts in search for the week ending 17/7/09.

SEO

Looking to build links with relevant blogs in your niche? Read Lucy’s guide on finding niche blogs over at SEOmoz.

Are your title tags in good order? Check out Marc’s guide to optimising title tags over at Bruce Clay Australasia.

PPC

Thinking about restructuring your Adwords campaigns? Be sure to pop over to PPC Hero and read their killer post on the affect of moving keywords in Adwords.

Social Media

Jason Murphy writes an open letter to United Airlines explaining how they might deal with their current reputation management issue - he’s come up with some fabulous ideas, it’s well worth a read.

Blogging

Think writing Guest Posts for other blogs is a waste of your precious time? Think again – read Lisa’s take on the benefits of guest blogging over at the Outspoken Media blog. 

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Funny

This week’s funny comes courtesy of Dilbert – enjoy & have a lovely weekend!

Image credit faeryboots

Hello there, here are my picks of the best blog posts in search for the week ending 10/7/09.

SEO

Joanna Butler talks Gorillas, Meerkats & Michael Jackson and the importance of generating ‘buzz’ around your brand.

PPC

Over at Search Engine Land, Doug Drees comes up trumps once again with his excellent tips on Ad Scheduling to maximise your PPC results.

Social Media

Still not quite got your head around link bait? Stephan Spencer explains all.

Is that celeb you’re following on Twitter the real deal? Ciaran talks about the problem of hoax accounts on Twitter.

Blogging

Should your CEO be Blogging? Lisa says no. Thought provoking, funny, and so true… but you didn’t hear me say that – ok?

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Funny

Wondering what SEO’s do on Twitter all day long? Well, after a long day, they like nothing more than to talk Princess Bride

Have a lovely weekend!

Image credit Jonathan Beard